Laugh and Cry,
by erikalikesfire
Summary: Modern superhero AU centering on Elsa and Jack Frost, set in the world of Wearing the Cape.
1. Chapter 1

10-year-old Elsa had to jump to reach the phone mounted to the wall above the kitchen counter. "Hello?"

" _Elsa? Elsa! Elsa, sweetie, are you okay? Is Anna okay?"_

"Hi Mama! Mama, I made snow!" Elsa gushed.

Anna was hopping with excitement, scooping snow up off the hardwood living room floor and throwing it in the air. "Mama, Elsa's an angel now!" she shouted at the phone, and Elsa heard her mother inhale sharply.

" _Elsa, what is happening over there? What is Anna saying?"_

Elsa giggled and said, "Anna says I'm an angel now because my hair is all white."

The line was quiet.

After a moment, Elsa continued, "And we're just playing in the snow I made. I can make snow," she repeated, just in case her mother had missed it the first time she said it.

" _Elsa, I need you to be the big sister right now and listen to me. Are you listening, honey?"_

"Yes, Mama," Elsa said, growing serious.

" _Stay inside the house. You and Anna must stay inside. Do not go out and play with—with the snow. I'm coming home right now, okay? Can you do that for me, sweetie?"_

"Yes, Mama, we'll stay inside. But Mama, I made the snow inside, so can we play with it?" Elsa asked.

Another pause.

" _I'm coming home now. Stay inside."_

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa and Anna were making angels in the thick snow covering the living room floor when their mother opened the front door and froze in the doorway, staring at Elsa.

Anna ran to their mother, kicking up snow the whole way, and hugged her knees before tugging on her hand and pointing, saying, "Mama, we're both angels now! I made a snow angel!"

Elsa's mother continued to stare at her, and she sat up, then looked down, watching her mother through white bangs. After a long moment, her mother suddenly glanced behind her out the door before slamming it shut, then rushing to the curtains and closing them as well. She tried to turn the lights on, but when nothing happened, she flicked the switch down hard and stood staring at the wall for a moment, breathing heavily.

Even Anna was standing quietly now.

"Mama?" Elsa said, and her mother flinched. "Mama, I'm sorry I made it snow inside," she tried in her goodest voice.

Her mother finally turned around and knelt down to her, staring at her strangely. "You are Elsa," she said finally, staring at Elsa's eyes, at her face and clothes and again and again and again at her hair.

"Mommy?" Elsa was raising her arms, she wanted a hug, but ice started growing from just in front of her palms, creeping toward her mother, and her mother scrambled back and tried to stand, stumbling and slamming into the wall behind her with a loud thud before darting to Anna and grabbing her. Anna clutched her mother tightly and started to cry. Elsa's arms had followed her mother in her dash across the room, and so had the growing lengths of ice, hovering in the air.

"Elsa, stop!" her mother shouted, and the ice stopped growing toward her, but smaller icicles began to burst forth all along the existing spikes, and where Anna and Elsa had made their snow angels, a layer of ice could now be seen covering the floor. Elsa's eyes were burning and she could tell she was about to cry, and now snow was falling as well—

—and the front door opened, and Elsa's father was standing there, staring, at the ice and at her, just as her mother had done—

—and she was truly sobbing now. "DADDY!" Elsa bawled, and her father quickly closed the door and rushed to her and hugged her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. He ignored the frost growing over his clothing as he held her and told her everything would be okay and smoothed her new, platinum-blonde hair.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

When Elsa woke, it was nighttime. Anna slept in her own bed for once, across the room where their parents had laid her down. Downstairs, the lights were on and her parents were watching the small TV in the kitchen.

"Good evening, princess. Hungry?" her father asked. Her mother turned to look at her.

Elsa nodded, eyes downcast. Her mother got up and padded over to the refrigerator in her slippers, then turned back and came and hugged her tight. "I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too, Mama," Elsa said as she hugged her mother back, then pulled up a chair at the kitchen table while her mother went back to the refrigerator and her father poured her a glass of water from a pitcher on the table. The room was silent as they watched the TV; her mother even seemed to be trying to cook quietly, gently placing a pan on the stove so it wouldn't make any more noise than necessary.

"— _and what we know—what we know for sure so far is, is that as far as we can tell no one was unaffected. Everyone, and this is everyone worldwide, suffered the same sensory blackout for those three-point-two seconds, simultaneously, and when they came to, there had been an actual electrical—like an electronics, or all powered machines, had had a blackout as well. The cause as yet remains unknown, so all we can do is just report what we know."_

" _Yes, thank you Tom. Tom Azucar, reporting from the field. And of course, speaking of the blackout, we have this video clip, already famous worldwide, if we can get that up on the screen. Yes, so, what we're seeing here is the tarmac at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago earlier today, just seconds after the blackout, and if you look in the upper right-hand corner, the baggage handler there, he'll look up and jump—flies—and it takes a moment for the cameraman to find him, but there he is, flying and catching a business jet that had lost power during the blackout and setting it down on the runway. And then he just—you can see him just standing there and staring at his hands a moment, and then he looks up and he's off again."_

" _Now, obviously, this could all be, it could be CGI or something, and on any other day that's all it'd be, just a dumb hoax—"_

" _Right, on any other day—but—"_

" _But that's, that might come to be, in history, be_ the video, _but it_ _'s not the_ only _video. We_ _'re getting them, we've been getting them all afternoon and into the evening, and our sister stations, and every other network, people doing the most fantastic, that is to say,_ supernatural, _things_ _…"_

" _Yeah, and so, at a certain point, you just have to say to yourself, 'Isn't this just the way the world is, now?' The world definitely wasn't like this yesterday, but all evidence seems to point to that world having changed, changed to the one we're in now."_

" _Yeah, that's exactly it. August 18, 1998: the day the world changed."_

" _Absolutely. And now, speaking of changing, on a potentially more somber note, I'm just getting word that the Whi—"_

Elsa's father turned off the TV. The kitchen was quiet for a moment, and then he said, softly, "I was getting coffee when the blackout hit. When I came out of it, I was on the floor. Spilled coffee all over my hand," and he showed Elsa his left hand, still a little red.

"Oh! Papa, are you okay?" she asked.

He smiled at her. "It hurt earlier, but now it's just a little tender."

Elsa nodded, satisfied. Her mother brought over a plate of sandwich halves and they dug in.

Elsa's father spoke again, "Do you remember the blackout too? When everything went dark?"

Elsa nodded. "I was watching TV. Anna was—she was running around." Elsa fidgeted a bit, then said, "She wasn't really that sick too, she just wanted to stay home with me."

Elsa's mother was smiling fondly. "Oh, she wasn't that sick after all? Well, she'll be in trouble later." At Elsa's sudden look of guilty, wide-eyed panic, she laughed, and added, "But just a little. There's nothing wrong with loving your sister too much."

Elsa's father was smiling faintly too. "So, Anna was running, and then…?"

"Oh, so she was running and then there was the blackout and she was on the floor, 'cause she fell in the blackout, and she was rubbing her face and starting to cry, and I knew I needed to get ice for her face but I couldn't leave her alone and I didn't know what to do and—and I started to panic," Elsa said, lowering her eyes briefly, before rushing on, "and I just wanted to make her happy and take care of her, and I thought of how much she liked the snow, and snow is cold so—" Elsa broke off, then hung her head, continuing in a quieter voice, "so I made some snow."

It was quiet for a moment, and then her father spoke up, softly, "'So you made some snow.' So your sister wouldn't hurt, so she wouldn't cry." He stared at her a second, and then his smile was coming back, "You made _some_ snow?"

Elsa squirmed a little in her seat. "I made some snow, and then I made a lot more."

Her mother pulled her into a one-armed hug. "I think you killed the TV, sweetie." At another worried _Oh!_ from Elsa, she gave her daughter another squeeze. "But there's nothing wrong with helping your sister. We'll get a new TV for the living room on the weekend." She eyed her daughter. "Which means you can't make snow inside the house anymore, okay?"

"You shouldn't make snow outside, either," Elsa's father said. "Elsa, this is really important. The snow you make, it's not… usual. And people don't like unusual things. They might be mean to you."

Elsa's mouth felt dry and too full of half-chewed sandwich, and she drank half of her water all at once. When she was done, she held the glass in both hands, staring into it. "I can't make my snow anymore?" she asked in a small voice.

Her father hesitated a moment before he said, "Honey, you're different now. Your hair is different, and your snow is really different, and… it just isn't safe. Until we know what this is, you should keep it hidden."

"But the man on TV is different, and he—he caught a plane! He did good, so people will like him, and I'm good… And they said on TV there's more, so lots of special people doing lots of good things isn't bad…" Elsa didn't know what to say, didn't know how to explain that the amazing things that she and others could do—they weren't wrong, and _not_ doing them _wasn_ _'t right._

Elsa's father was eyeing her glass and the solid block of ice within it as they heard the tiniest _pop_. He gingerly grabbed the glass with five fingers around the rim and lifted it out of her hands, bringing it over the table and toward the surface before letting it fall the last half-inch, and the glass exploded around the cylinder of ice inside.

"Jesus, Agnarr!" Elsa's mother exclaimed, bustling off to the closet and emerging with broom and dustpan. "Elsa, stay in your seat and don't touch the glass."

Elsa's father hadn't looked away from Elsa the whole time, had watched her eyes follow the glass, widen when it shattered; had seen the way her hands darted to the edges of her seat and gripped it hard; how frost spread out from her palms to cover the whole chair and now her nightgown was stuck, frozen to it. "Elsa," he said firmly, and she looked from her seat to him, wide-eyed and gasping. "Elsa, it's okay. Just calm down." His voice became gentle, "Breathe. Just calm down and everything will be okay."

Their gazes remained locked, and her father kept repeating his instructions to _calm down_ and _breathe_ and assurances that _everything would be fine_ in the same soothing voice, all while her mother swept up the broken glass on the floor and table, tsking and alternating glares at her husband with unreadable looks at Elsa. Finally, Elsa's breathing evened and slowed and she was able to loosen the ice holding her to the chair.

"Elsa," her father began, "these powers aren't just dangerous because people might be afraid of you; they're dangerous because _they_ _'re dangerous._ You could hurt someone: yourself, or me, or your mama, or Anna, or one of your friends from school…"

Elsa's face was pointed at the table as she watched her father through her bangs. "I don't want to hurt anyone," she said in a tiny voice.

Her father's expression hardened. "Then you need to hide these powers. And Elsa, when your emotions are strong, when you're surprised or scared, they come out, right? Like with the chair, and earlier, when I came home, right?"

Elsa nodded.

"So you can't let yourself feel. It's the only way to be safe. Hide, and stay in control. Conceal it, don't feel it."

Elsa was quiet a long moment. "Conceal it, don't feel it. Okay. Okay, Papa." She smiled a tight-lipped smile. "I'll be good."

He reached out and gingerly patted her head, then smoothed her hair back when nothing happened. "I know you will." He brought his hand down a little and let the backs of his fingers rest on her forehead. "You're not warm at all anymore. Are you feeling better?"

"Oh!" she chirped, "I forgot I was sick!" Her brow wrinkled as she thought hard for a moment. "I must've got better after the blackout."

If her father hadn't been touching her, she wouldn't have felt him flinch.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _(The audience appears just as shocked as Snow Queen herself)_

 _What? No, I don_ _'t hate my parents; how can you even ask me that? Look, those were scary times, and must especially have been so for those who were all grown up and had thought that they had known the shape of the world. The day of the Event, we watched an eighteen-year-old airport employee become a superhero. The very next day, we got our first supervillain. In a week, that airport employee was Atlas, and in a_ _month, he was founding your Chicago Sentinels; meanwhile, entire countries were falling apart into war, war, war. This was before we knew what triggered breakthroughs, or what the types were, or even that there_ were _types; before we knew if we might not all wake up the next day, or maybe have a second blackout, a de-powering Event, and the world would be normal again._

 _And if the powers stayed? To which paranormal dystopia in our popular culture should my parents have looked for guidance? Should they have feared government agents coming to take me away, to experiment on me or press me into military service as a sixty pound weapon of mass destruction? Should they have feared_ me? _Should they have dragged me into the street and burned me as a witch? Because let us not forget, all of those things_ happened.

 _(Snow Queen chews on her bottom lip for a moment, eyes on the ground as she considers)_

 _Of course training would have been ideal, but I might as well wish my breakthrough had occurred a year later, or five_ _—not only was there no DSA, but as far as I know, I was the first cryokinetic breakthrough—and the only A-class until Frostitute, nearly four years later, at least in the US—we're not exactly common. Simply said, there was no one to teach me, even had there been anyone around to trust enough to ask._

 _(Snow Queen sighs, then turns and raises an eyebrow at Jack Frost)_

 _You had it easy._

 _(The host and audience laugh; Jack Frost smirks and fires back with,_ _"I had_ something _easy,_ _" waggling his eyebrows suggestively; "Oh, hush," Snow Queen replies, flicking a finger at him and shooting a snowball no larger than a marble at his chest; when the studio has quieted down, Snow Queen appears to have regained her pensive mood)_

 _My parents were just trying to keep us safe, from an unenviable position. And_ _…_

 _(She smiles a little sadly at the audience and gives a slight shrug)_

 _They weren_ _'t exactly wrong, after all, were they?_

ooooooooooooooooooooo

AN: Tangled and Frozen are Disney, while How to Train Your Dragon and Rise of the Guardians are Dreamworks (::heartbreak::). The setting is from Marion G. Harmon's Wearing the Cape series, self-published on Amazon. "Original" character names are auto-generated by Scrivener, poorly-conceived puns, or beer =P

7


	2. Chapter 2

Trigger warning at bottom; spoiler duh.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Jack blinked. _Did I fall asleep?_ he wondered as he sat up, taking in the room full of moving boxes. On the other side of the couch was his new stepsister, Emma, also looking like she had just woken up, but the TV was off—and they had been watching it a moment ago, and who would have turned it off?—and the fan was still spinning as it rotated side-to-side on its base, but slowing down, again like it had just been switched off.

"Jack?" Emma said, sounding confused and a little frightened.

Jack was 9 and eager to try out this big brother thing. He pasted on a wide smile. "Hey Emma! Did you fall asleep?" He forced a chuckle. "Heh, me too." He fiddled with the remote, but the TV wasn't turning back on. "I wonder what happened to the TV?"

"No," Emma said, watching Jack with all the distrust a 5-year-old could muster. "I didn't sleep. Are you playing a trick on me again?"

Jack's eyes went wide, remembering what had happened the last time he'd caused trouble around Steve, his new stepfather. "There's no prank!" he said quickly, pleadingly. Emma's father was in the Navy—the reason Jack and his mother had moved from Pennsylvania to San Diego as they made their new, little family—and he was a firm believer in obedience and discipline.

Emma still didn't believe him. "Mom!" she called toward the back of the house where Jack's mom was still unpacking, "Jack's being mean to me again!"

Jack realized he couldn't hear his mother's radio either and frowned, moving to the fan and trying the buttons. Nothing.

"Jackson Overland! Stop teasing your sister and watch TV, or come help me unpack!" came from down the hall, followed by muttering that he probably wasn't supposed to hear. Emma looked at him smugly.

"I'm not teasing, the TV just turned off and it won't turn back on," he called back, then added, "The fan too."

"The TV and the fan?" Jack's mother said as she walked into the room, putting her hands on hips and frowning. "My radio won't work, either."

"Did we pay the power bill?" Jack asked.

Jack's mother was shaking her head. "We just moved here; we don't even have a bill yet. And the radio is battery-powered."

Jack considered for a moment, then walked to the fridge, listening to it for a second before opening the freezer and putting his hand inside to feel how cold it was. He went back to the living room with two ice cream bars, giving one to Emma. "I think the fridge might be out, too," he said, starting on his ice cream.

"Oh no," his mother said, rushing to the fridge. "Oh no no no no no, we just filled this thing!"

"Mom?" Emma called into the kitchen, starting to look scared again. Jack noticed her ice cream hanging from her hand and about to drip on the carpet and darted forward to catch it. He was surprised when Emma grabbed him. "Jack, Mom, what's going on?"

Jack's mother was cursing in the kitchen, so Jack took over, turning to Emma and bringing her ice cream bar in front of her face. She eyed it for a moment, then bobbed her head forward, biting it and pulling it out of his hand. Jack grinned at her and her eyes slitted into a smile as she grabbed the stick with both hands, a ring of chocolate around her lips.

"You have a radio in your stuff, right?" Jack asked. Emma nodded, and he continued, "Let's go get it and find out what's going on. Maybe it'll still work since it was off when the—the blackout hit."

Emma bobbed another nod and grabbed his hand, following him down the hall to her room. Jack felt the little hand gripping his and decided being a big brother was pretty great.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Jackson Overland?" the teacher said, her eyes scanning across the classroom.

"Jack, please," Jack said, raising his hand.

Her lips thinned. "Well, Mr. Overland, it seems you're new with us here at Chula Vista Elementary. Why don't you introduce yourself?"

"Uh, okay. Uhm, I'm Jack—"

"Stand, please," the teacher said.

Jack stood, shoulders a little slumped beneath the gazes of the teacher and 40-odd students. He waved weakly. "I'm Jack." He stopped, trying to think of something else to say. Someone snickered, but most of the class simply looked bored, and Jack felt himself growing warm. Why did he have to do this? Couldn't the teacher just keep taking roll?

"And?" the teacher prodded impatiently. "Where are you from?"

"Pennsylvania." Crickets. And damn this woman.

"And what do you think of San Diego so far?" the beast continued.

"I think I should have paid more attention in Spanish at my last school," Jack didn't quite snap back, and, surprisingly, the class laughed. Jack straightened, not feeling like he his skin was burning anymore, and wondered what else he could say when he noticed the teacher staring at him; her lips were even thinner than before.

"You'll see me after class, Mr. Overland," she said, before turning back to her attendance sheet.

The boy on Jack's right caught his eye, smiling a bit and rolling his eyes at the teacher. Jack grinned back.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Jackson, get your butt in here!" Jack heard his stepfather call from down the hall. Jack scribbled out the end of his sentence and stabbed a period, then closed his English notebook, turned off his music, and headed down the hall.

He found Steve alone in the kitchen, still in his work uniform and boots, sitting and eating dinner at the table while he watched the TV in the living room. "Yes, sir?" Jack said from the doorway.

"Get out the damn way, boy," the man said, leaning to see around him and waving one arm as he chewed. He cuffed him when he was in range, muttering, "I said get in _here,_ didn't I?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"What took you so long anyway?"

"I came right away," Jack replied, confused.

Jack's stepfather looked at him for the first time since he'd entered the room. "You talking back to me again?" He seemed to be considering something.

Jack felt his heart start to pound. "No, sir. I—" he thought desperately, then realized what he could say, "—I just had to finish a homework problem. I was almost done and I didn't want to lose my train of thought." Steve was still looking at him, thinking. "I'm sorry, sir. I'll come right away next time," he tried.

Jack's stepfather watched him another moment, then nodded, seeming satisfied, and went back to watching the TV and eating. Finally, he spoke up, "What's this about your homeroom teacher?"

"What about my homeroom teacher?" Jack said. Jack's stepfather glared at him and began to stand up, and Jack started talking as fast as he could, "I got in trouble today! My teacher just has it in for me, she just likes giving me detention—"

"Jack, why we gotta do this every damn night?"

"I didn't do anything this time! Really, I was just—" he cut off, unsure if it would be worse to say it or—but no, it was too late to argue he had done _nothing,_ not that that ever worked anyway.

"Just what?" the man said, eyes glittering.

Jack's eyes were burning. Really, it _was_ nothing—no one else would have gotten in trouble for saying the homeroom teacher's breakthrough was making her lips disappear—but now he'd somehow said he'd done something again, so something it would be, and lying on top of that.

"And now you're gonna cry, too?" Steve shook his head in disgust. "Boy, you think I want to come home to this? I work hard all day so you and your mom and your sister can have food and clothes and a place to sleep; I get home and I just want to have my dinner and watch some TV." Jack couldn't see distinctly at this point, just a watery blur, but he knew the sound of a belt clearing belt loops. "But every _damn_ day," the man said, grabbing Jack by the upper arm and dragging him to a chair, where he banged his knee and almost fell over it, "I gotta deal with your ass causing trouble, then lying about it to my fucking face, then _crying_ cause your stupid ass—"

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _Nah, not always._

 _(Jack Frost grins)_

 _When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Atlas-type or Ajax or something, you know, one of those hard AF mofos._

 _(He laughs and performs a bodybuilder flex from his seat)_

 _Can you imagine?_

 _What? Reason? Oh, you know. Every kid wants to be Superman, I guess. No real reason._

ooooooooooooooooooooo

TW: Child abuse (verbal, implied physical, non-sexual).

AN: I was honestly surprised when I wrote this; it got dark faster than I had intended. Next chapter will be out tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm dying," Anna accused, her body spread out across Elsa's bed and head hanging off the side. "You've killed me."

Elsa rolled her eyes and shoved Anna to the floor.

"Betrayal! Done in by my own sister. Dead of boredom." Anna paused dramatically. "And a broken heart."

"I'm not supposed to make snow anymore," Elsa told her sister for the thousandth time.

"Mama and Papa aren't even home!" Anna said.

"Th—that's now how rules work!" Elsa sputtered. "And I made such a big mess last time. The TV in the living room is still broken!"

"Then we can't break it again!" Anna said brightly.

"There'll be snow all over the floor. They'll know," Elsa said firmly.

"Then we'll do it in the bathtub," Anna said. Elsa hesitated, eyes looking down and then darting left and right, trying to think of a response. Anna saw weakness and she pounced. "Snowman!" she yelled, grabbing Elsa's hand and dragging her to the door.

Elsa had to choose between following and falling, and before she knew it she was racing ahead of Anna down the hall, laughing all the way. She could never say no to her sister.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Elsa."

Elsa kept her breathing slow and even.

"Elsa, are you awake?"

Elsa added the gentlest snore.

"Elsa, there's a spider on your pillow."

 _Amateur_ , Elsa thought.

Then she felt a tickle on her neck and bolted upright, one hand brushing frantically at her neck and shoulder while the other flailed in useless agitation in front of her as it spit out small flurries of snow across the room. She turned wide eyes on Anna and saw her with both hands clamped tightly over her mouth, eyes smiling and snowflakes falling out of her hair with every shake of laughter.

"Look out," Anna gasped. "There's another one," and she blew gently on Elsa's face before breaking down into another fit of muffled giggles.

Elsa stared at her sister in disbelief for a moment, then huffed and flopped back down, turning to face the wall and pulling the blanket up to her ears.

"Elsaaaaaaaa."

Elsa resolutely ignored her sister.

"Elsa, I'm sorry."

 _Unlikely,_ Elsa thought.

"Really sorry."

 _Definitely untrue._ Elsa sniffed to show what she thought of _that._

Anna was quiet for a long moment. "Really a little sorry."

Elsa considered this a moment, then reached behind her and pulled the cover down. Anna crawled into the bed and snuggled in.

"Thank you for the snow."

Elsa sighed.

"Even if it was only a little bit."

 _Don_ _'t let her get started._ "Go to sleep, Anna."

"Don't feel bad. You hardly gave me any snow at all."

Elsa turned around and looked Anna in the eyes. "The bathroom is right next to Mama and Papa's room. They'll hear us. They'll hear _you_."

Anna's eyes lit up. "That's why we'll do it in the basement!"

Elsa looked at her sister in confusion.

"There's a drain in the basement for the washing machine."

Elsa's eyes widened in understanding, then wonder. "How much time do you spend thinking of places to build a snowman?"

Anna was practically vibrating with excitement now. "ALL the time!"

Looking at Anna's bright, hopeful eyes, Elsa realized her sister simply wouldn't be able to sleep until she had her snowman. As the big sister, Elsa needed to make sure Anna was well-rested for school tomorrow. Really, it was her duty to help Anna get to sleep. And, a little part of her admitted to herself, she wanted to use her powers more.

Every day, she saw the superheroes on TV doing amazing things. It was all anyone would talk about at school. And she couldn't tell anyone that she was one of them. The breakthroughs on TV were becoming more amazing by the day, and she was being left behind. She hadn't had a bad moment since that first day, and that was hardly fair, was it, with the way her parents had reacted to her?

Elsa decided then and there that she wouldn't use her powers outside, just like her parents had asked, but inside the house would be fine.

 _Why don_ _'t you tell Mama and Papa about this decision?_ the good girl inside of her asked. And she knew the answer. The answer was, "Because they might say no." _That_ _'s not how rules work,_ the good girl cried. But Elsa was done being afraid of herself for no reason.

Anna was still staring at her with wide, hopeful eyes, hands fisted beneath her chin. Elsa smirked at her. "Let's go!"

ooooooooooooooooooooo

All through the fall, Elsa watched silently during playground discussions of what breakthroughs everyone was going to have someday, sat on the sidelines while her friends divvied up roles and played Capes and Villains. When her teacher asked her to write about what cape she wanted to be and why, she spent long minutes staring blankly at the paper before managing to make up something about Touches Clouds. It was the first time she ever lied.

When winter rolled around, Elsa thought Anna would be satisfied with the natural snow; she was surprised and secretly delighted when their clandestine nighttime trips to the basement continued.

Then spring came, and Elsa froze Anna's leg solid.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa stumbled up the stairs, skinning her shin, crying out until she smacked her chin on a stair. Where her hand had landed, frost formed. She looked back and saw Anna in the same position, collapsed backward with one leg held almost upright inside a steep block of ice tapering nearly from her knee to the floor. _Anna_ _…_

She forced herself to stand, biting her bottom lip as she ran up the stairs. "MAMA!" she screamed as she threw open the basement door. "MAMA, PAPA! ANNA'S HURT!" She heard a thump from upstairs. "Come fast, she's hurt bad!" The noise increased, and Elsa made her way into the kitchen, pausing for a moment to wrap her hand in a towel before grabbing the phone off the wall.

" _9-1-1, what is your emergency?"_ a woman said.

"I'm a breakthrough," Elsa blurted out, and a part of her realized this was the first time she had said it. _Focus!_ "I froze my sister. Her leg is frozen."

A pause, and then, _"Hold on one second, please."_

"Elsa, what is happening?" her mother cried as she came down the stairs.

Elsa's eyes burned. "Basement," she choked out. Her mother fairly flew across the room and down the stairs. Elsa heard her mother cry out.

Elsa's father was approaching her now, but she looked away, turned away, stepped away, cradling the phone as she heard voices come back on the line.

" _Boston Guardians, dispatch speaking,_ _"_ a man said.

" _Norfolk emergency services, I have a child on the line saying she's a breakthrough and she froze someone's leg."_

" _Understood, stay on the line, please. Miss, are you there?"_

"Yes," Elsa croaked. She swallowed and tried again. "Yes, I'm here."

" _Can you tell me what happened?"_

"It was my sister. I froze my sister's leg," Elsa said, getting impatient.

" _Is anyone else injured?"_

"No," Elsa said.

" _Is it safe to enter the premises?"_

"I—what?" All of this talking was _wasting time._

" _Is it safe to send someone there?"_

"Yes, yes it's safe! Please, come! Hurry!" Elsa said.

" _Okay, miss, we're on our way. I need you to go open the door for me right now, okay? Go right now. Norfolk, address, please?"_

Elsa listened as the woman from 9-1-1 rattled off her address. She stood there, ignoring the presence of her father behind her.

" _Miss?"_

"Yes?" Elsa said.

" _Is the door open?"_

Elsa _ran_ to the door, and when she opened it a tall, skinny man in a gray and white bodysuit and mask was standing on her doorstep. "'Bout bloody time," the man said, shooing her inside and closing the door behind him. He looked around and Elsa realized everything she could see was covered in a layer of frost and there was snow in the air.

"Then why didn't you just knock?" Elsa father yelled angrily.

"Kiddo here's, what, 10 years old? Tryin'a keep this quiet, ain't we? Name's Bunny, by the way. Where's the sister?" the cape said.

"Downstairs," Elsa said, and in a rush of air the man was gone.

She heard his voice calling up from the basement, "Uh, kid? Can you get down here, please?"

In the basement, Elsa saw the cape—Bunny? What kind of superhero name was Bunny?—kneeling beside Anna, with his hand raised toward Elsa's mother on his other side.

Elsa didn't look at her mother.

"Kid, you gotta listen to me real careful. You listening?"

Elsa nodded.

"I need this ice gone so I can take her to—to get help," he said, green eyes boring into her. "But, and this is important, _don_ _'t unfreeze her leg_. Can you do that?"

Elsa knew she was capable, but the real question was whether or not she could control her powers right now. _I have to._ She nodded.

"Are you sure? Don't do it if you're not sure."

"I'm sure," she said. "I can do it."

The cape stepped away and started talking to her father in a hushed voice. Elsa approached her sister, looking at her face. So pale, and her lips turning blue. Her face looked different from how it did when she was sleeping. _Because when she_ _'s sleeping, she's happy, but you made her pass out in fear._

Tears stung Elsa's eyes and she wiped them away angrily on her sleeve. They scraped away from her skin like pebbles. She peered at the little shards of ice stuck to her sleeve, then looked at the rest of the room. It was covered in frost, just like upstairs. Elsa glared hatefully at the drifting snow.

 _Conceal it. Don_ _'t feel it._ Elsa closed her eyes. _Conceal it. Don_ _'t feel it._ She took a deep breath, in and out. _Conceal. Don_ _'t feel._ Her father and Bunny had quieted; the only sound was her mother's soft sobs. _Conceal, don_ _'t feel._

Elsa opened her eyes and laughed humorlessly when she saw how simple it was. She heard feet shuffle behind her as she reached out and touched the ice, vanishing it with a thought, revealing Anna's leg, skin cracked and bloated and blue.

A beat, and then Bunny was walking back to Anna, scooping her up and talking, "Alright. Number on the card. Pack a bag. Don't forget the cell phone."

And with a blur they were gone, the snow and Elsa's braid whipping to the side in a sudden breeze.

Elsa stood, and as her gaze passed over her mother, she saw her staring at her like she didn't recognize her.

 _Conceal, don_ _'t feel._

"A bag? Of course. I'll pack one for Anna as well."

Her father reached a hand out to her as she marched past, but pulled back when she stopped and turned to look at him.

"Elsa… you're bleeding," he said. She thought of her shin, but he was staring at her face, her lips, and she touched them and regarded the red smear on her fingertips.

"We're going to a hospital," she said, but saying it felt useless in a way she didn't quite understand. She shook her head and continued walking up the stairs, planning what to pack.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _Crickey. Really? Alright._

 _I was an Event-day breakthrough, y_ _'know,_ the _hotshot speester of the East Coast, a cape right from the beginning, and six months in I thought I was a veteran. And then one fine spring middle-of-the-night I get called to some fancy house out in the extra-rich suburbs, and it_ _'s a little 10-year-old Snow Queen. Froze her sister's leg all the way through, right to the floor. She'd been training nights, hiding it—the training, not that she had powers—hiding it from them lackwit—alright, I won't say anything about it if she won't._

 _Where was I? Right, so I see this girl froze to the ground, mum curled up over her and rocking her and bawling, and_ _—and I remember every thought and the exact order I had them in:_

" _Girl fell back bad, knee was probably broke before mum got to her."_

" _Not that it's gonna matter anyway."_

" _Good thing we got_ _Hiccup._ _"_

 _And y_ _'know, it wasn't until thoughts four and five that I even took any time at all to realize that this woman? This is the worst night of her life. This little girl, she's gonna wake up, if she wakes up, with one less leg than she's used to._

 _That answer your bloody question?_

ooooooooooooooooooooo

AN: Trust me.


	4. Chapter 4

The car was too small. One slip, and her parents would be dead. Anna would have no one left to look after her. A one-legged orphan. Broken and unloved.

 _Unacceptable._

Elsa kept a tight rein on her powers, staring out the window at the darkness and the passing halos cast by the occasional street light, thinking of nothing but control. Breathe in. _Conceal._ Breathe out. _Don_ _'t feel._

Elsa noticed her breath wasn't fogging the glass.

In. _Conceal._ Out. _Don_ _'t feel._

That just meant the cold was inside her.

In. _Conceal._ Out. _Don_ _'t feel._

Where it belonged.

A phone rang, and Elsa's father startled so hard she felt the whole car shake.

Elsa hadn't flinched, hadn't lost control, hadn't stopped breathing, hadn't lost track of her mantra.

 _Good, for you._ Elsa didn't let the thought distract her.

In. _Conceal._ Out. _Don_ _'t feel._

"Yes," Elsa's mother whispered. She cleared her throat, then, louder, "Do it. Whatever you need to do."

 _That_ _'s the leg._

In. _Conceal._ Out. _Don_ _'t feel._

Elsa felt something fall onto her arm and bounce to the floor. She was considering whether or not she could spare the focus to investigate when another fell into her lap.

In. _Conceal._ Out. _Don_ _'t feel._

She picked up a tiny shard of ice.

 _Inside is fine,_ she allowed herself to think.

She returned to her mantra as the useless bits of ice continued to fall.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa stood apart from her parents, her family the sole occupants of the hospital waiting room until the man entered. She watched him take in the space as he approached her parents.

 _Black suit and tie, white shirt, earpiece: government. Department of Superhuman Affairs? This is when they take me away._

"Mr. and Mrs. Arendelle? I'm Geoffrey, with the Boston Guardians." He held out his hand, then let it drop when Elsa's parents ignored it.

"And you must be Elsa. It's a pleasure to meet you, miss." He leaned down and tried to smile disarmingly, but Elsa could see the way his eyes were examining her, piece by piece. Already taking her apart.

"I'm ready to go," she told him, and he tilted his head minutely, reevaluating her. She was considering if she should turn to her parents, if… if they would let her say goodbye _(conceal don_ _'t feel)_ when her father took a step toward the man.

Geoffrey turned smoothly to face him, hands up and spread, saying, "Actually, we do have rooms prepared for you all at the Workshop. It's only a mile away—"

"I'm staying here," Elsa's mother cut him off.

"We all are," Elsa's father said, crossing his arms.

Elsa blinked. _They want to keep me,_ she realized, and it _hurt._

Geoffrey was smiling regretfully at her father. "I'm afraid that isn't possible. Just because we're already in a hospital doesn't mean we _want_ people getting injured."

Elsa bit her bottom lip, tasted warm, salty blood. She ran around her father to the man, stopping short of grabbing his hand. "I'll come with you," she said. "Just don't hurt them, please don't hurt them."

"You're not taking my daughter," Elsa's mother snarled, before looking to Elsa's feet and freezing.

Elsa looked down and watched an ice chip fall to the floor and skitter across the tiles. She saw another that must have been three tears stuck together shatter when it hit the cold ground.

"I'm not taking your daughter," Geoffrey said carefully, seeming to watch everything at once, "And this isn't really the place for this conversation, but if we can all remember that there are some _special circumstances_ that we are better equipped to deal with at the Workshop, maybe we can agree that at least Elsa needs to come with me."

Elsa's father's jaw flexed. "I'm coming with you."

Geoffrey eyed him cautiously. "Fabulous."

Elsa kept watching the collection of frozen tears grow, biting her lip. Finally, she peeked up at her father through her bangs, saw him still watching Geoffrey, saw her mother watching _her_ and looking like she wanted to cry. Elsa took a half step toward her mother. "You… You really want to keep me?" she asked, whispering at the end.

"Oh, honey," her mother said, rushing to her but stopping just short; crouched down and arms reaching, but not touching. And then she was holding Elsa's face, cupping her cheeks, pressing thumbs to frozen tears and they melted and flowed.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa refused to get in another car, and so Geoffrey walked with her and her father to the car to retrieve their bags, then led the way out of the parking lot and down to street level.

"It's only about 15 minutes to the Workshop," Geoffrey said, waiting for her to catch up and then taking a position between her and the street.

"You're next to the Boston Common?" Elsa father asked from her other side.

Geoffrey nodded, scanning the mostly-empty roads. "The Event, and the events after the Event… opened up some space. It's centrally located and well-connected. The Guardians are Boston's A-team, so we got the best location."

Elsa noticed a shadow pass over the moon and started searching the sky. Geoffrey noticed and looked up too, then half-turned to watch Elsa. Elsa gasped when she saw what had blocked out the moon: a flying man in a white suit, cape billowing behind him. "Is that Atlas?" she asked in awe.

Geoffrey grinned. "Don't let him hear you say that. Atlas- _type_. Apex. He's with the Watertown Warriors."

Elsa's father spoke up, speaking slowly, "This isn't Watertown."

Geoffrey gave a small shrug. "Only a couple miles if you're flying. All of the Boston teams patrol all of Greater Boston." After a moment, he added, "But yes, he's probably here to keep an eye on us. We keep in touch." He looked at Elsa's father, then added, a little dryly, "We're professionals."

They walked in silence for a while, and Elsa saw Apex fly by a couple more times. She also noticed that Geoffrey kept giving her looks out of the corner of his eye, in addition to his constant scanning of the rest of the street. "What?" she finally said.

Geoffrey didn't slow, but he did catch her eye, measuring her for a moment before speaking up, "I can't believe you thought I was there to abduct you." His voice was even, but he still sounded a little offended.

"I've seen _The X-Files,_ _"_ Elsa said, and she caught him rolling his eyes for the briefest moment. "What? You were saying all that stuff about," and she lowered her voice as much as she could, "'We don't _want_ anyone to get hurt, here,' so what was I supposed to think?"

"I was talking about _you,_ miss," he said, and now he was watching her with his full attention. "I didn't want _you_ having another accident."

That quieted her. "Oh." _…another accident, like before,_ she heard. _Another accident like the one where you_ _—_

 _No,_ she thought. _No, not again_ _—_

— _I can_ _'t—_

— _Papa_ _'s right here—_

—she had stopped, and he _touched her_ and she shoved his hand away, wide-eyed and hyperventilating—

— _I can_ _'t I can't I can't—_

— _conceal don_ _'t feel conceal don't feel conceal don't feel conce—_

"Elsa," Geoffrey said, crouching right in front of her, startling her into locking eyes with him. "Elsa, that place you're going to?" He shook his head. "Don't go there anymore."

Elsa suddenly became aware of her father yelling, at Geoffrey and at the cape in white, who was now standing in their midst, holding her father back with one unmoving arm to his chest.

"Problem, Platoon?" the cape in white—Apex—asked.

"Maybe," Geoffrey replied. "Get him back a bit, just in case." And he _grabbed her shoulders._

Elsa tried to back away, but his grip was solid. She couldn't stop _thinking_ , couldn't start her mantra, couldn't get control of her power with him _looking_ at her like that and _touching_ her which was exactly when she needed control the most and she was going to freeze his hands—

"You're not going to freeze my hands," Geoffrey said, shocking her mind into silence. He lifted one hand and waved his fingers in front of her wide eyes. "See? Still here."

He paused while Elsa continued to stare at his hand.

"Or maybe you will freeze me," he said easily with a small shrug, and her eyes darted back to his in alarm. "But I imagine I'll be fine." He smiled at her, and then the smile turned sad. "It must have been so hard for you, trying to learn control while surrounded by such fragile things." The smile warmed again. "But you don't have to worry about that anymore. We're going to help you learn to control your gifts, really control them. Everything's going to be fine. _Genuinely_ fine, not—" he waved his hand, "—'I'm dead inside and nothing matters' fine. So don't go there anymore, okay?" He gave her shoulder a brief squeeze and let her go.

Elsa stared at him. "You're a cape, aren't you?"

"You didn't think they were going to send a _normal_ G-man after you, did you? Like I said, we're professionals." He grinned and stuck out his hand. "I'm Platoon, but you can call this one Geoffrey. Nice to meet you."

She eyed his hand carefully, then smiled shyly and shook it, skin to skin. "Elsa. Nice to meet you."

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Geoffrey showed them to their rooms in the Workshop, then turned to Elsa, saying, "Your exam is scheduled for nine in the morning. You'll get a wake up call."

Elsa blinked. "Exam?"

"For your powers."

"Oh."

After a moment Elsa and her father thanked him, then waited, looking for some kind of signal that it was okay to go as Geoffrey just stood there. He seemed to be considering something.

"We're going to take care of Anna, too," Geoffrey finally said.

Elsa and her father both looked at him sharply. She felt hope welling up within her. "You have someone who can heal her?" She hadn't even considered the possibility that everything might be fixed so easily.

Geoffrey grimaced. "No. I should have been clear about that. I'm sorry, but no. As far as we know there aren't any breakthroughs that can heal physical damage for anyone except themselves yet. But we do have someone right here who should be able to take care of any psychological trauma, and as for her leg…" His lips quirked, and he continued, "Tell me, have you heard of Horrendous?"

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _I_ _'m sorry, but yes, we absolutely can. The law is still unclear, still being written on a lot of things regarding breakthroughs, like, for example, whether or not we actually needed to show you Elsa's examination results—we're making an analogy here between superpowers and medical records with respect to minors to decide that yes, we probably do—but on this, we are crystal clear, the legal precedent set and upheld, the appeals struck down. Your daughter will stay with us for training until we have determined that she is no longer a danger to herself or others. End of story._

ooooooooooooooooooooo

AN: Next chapter will be back to Jack on Monday.


	5. Chapter 5

Trigger warning at bottom.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Jack stared out the window of his new 5th grade classroom and sighed, contemplating the desolate view. A sandy playground and one poor, skinny tree. A road with no cars on it. And not a single thing else, all the way to the mountains at the horizon. _Two and a half years in San Diego and I_ _'m a city boy,_ he thought with disgust. _This place is more like Burgess than SD ever was._ Jack laughed as he realized how ridiculous that thought was: it was January in this tiny town north of San Diego and he was looking at a blue, cloudless sky while the bright sun baked the desert around him to a balmy 68 degrees. _Yeah, just like home. Maybe we_ _'ll go make a snowman later._

"Something funny, Jack?" the teacher, Mrs. Ellis, asked.

Jack gave her a wide, honest grin. "Ah, no ma'am. Was just thinking it'd be fun to make a snowman later." The class erupted in laughter and the teacher rolled her eyes a bit, but she looked amused.

Why couldn't everyone be that easy?

"Well," Mrs. Ellis said, "since we're almost out of time, why don't you introduce yourself."

 _A little odd to do this at the end of the day,_ Jack thought before catching her eye and realizing, _Oh, this is punishment. Well, I can take what I earn._ He threw out another easy smile and stood. "Hi, everyone. I'm Jack. I just moved here from San Diego."

A moment, and then a girl spoke up, "Is your dad the new cop cape?"

Jack felt his smile slip for a moment and forced it wide again. "Steve—my stepfather—is an Ajax-type with the sheriffs," he said diplomatically.

A breath, and then everyone was shouting.

"What class?"

"How strong is he?"

"How did he get his breakthrough?"

"Does he wear tights?"

"Why would you be an Ajax? They can't even fly!"

 _D, more than he needs to be, a huge mistake, I wish,_ you _try telling him that,_ Jack thought as the bell rang, smiling and shrugging helplessly at the crowd as he packed his bag and tapped his naked wrist.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Jack and Emma were doing their homework on the kitchen table when Jack heard the car come into the driveway, entering a little faster and braking a little harder than usual. Jack stopped writing, tilting his head to the side. When he heard Steve cursing as he waited for the garage door to rise, he started packing up his and Emma's stuff.

"Hey, I'm still working!" she said.

"Let's finish in my room," Jack said, throwing on a smile. "Sounds like Steve had a bad day. He's gonna want some space to himself."

Emma scowled at him but started helping put her stuff away. _"I_ don't make him mad. You're the only one who ever gets in trouble," she pointed out, a little snottily.

Jack looked at her a moment, taking her in the way a person forgets to when they see someone every day. _8\. She_ _'s already 8 years old._ "And let's keep it that way." He grabbed their bags and started down the hall.

When their mom called them back to the kitchen for dinner, Steve was sitting at the table, five beers in and watching the TV in the living room while Jack's mom finished at the stove. Jack eyed the beers and then started clearing the empties so he and Emma could set the table.

"What?" Steve said, glowering at Jack.

"Sir?" Jack said, facing him and pasting on a smile.

"You got something to say?" Steve asked, rotating the can in his hand by his fingertips.

Jack's mother shot him a warning look and Jack spent a moment trying to think of something safe before settling on, "No, sir." He went back to clearing the table while Steve continued to glare.

Eventually, Steve scoffed and took another sip of his beer. "Wipe that smile off your face. Don't need your attitude today, boy. Got enough of that shit from them fuckwits at the Sheriff's Office." He took another sip. "Acting like they expected goddamn Ajax himself for what they're paying me. 'What, you're not even bulletproof? Are you even really a cape?' Fuckin' ass."

Ajax-type. The breakthrough for the unimaginative. Strong and tough, but that was relative. As a D-class, Steve could lift one end of a car, but not the whole thing, while the real Ajax could throw a tank; Steve could take a baseball bat to the head or a nail gun to the chest, but the original could— _had_ , on news clips from the China War—eat a round from an anti-aircraft gun and keep on fighting. Steve was a barely-a-super class from the barely-a-super type.

And he was _not_ a cape.

 _Not that I_ _'m dumb enough to say any of that._

A flash of pain, and Jack was sprawled on the kitchen tile, left hand on his cheek, right throbbing where he'd fallen with his weight on top of a can. He lifted his hand and saw a bright line of blood across his palm; the can had ripped open when he'd fallen on it, the aluminum tearing and its sharp edge slicing through his hand. The world looked funny, and Jack realized he could only see out of his right eye.

"What'd I fuckin' tell you about that smile?"

 _Not dumb enough to say anything, but not smart enough to not laugh about it,_ Jack thought ruefully _._ At least his vision was coming back in his left eye, circles of sight strobing through the darkness.

"God, Steve, leave the boy alone," Jack's mom said, walking past him to put a baking pan on the table. "He just smiles a lot, it doesn't mean anything."

 _It means I_ _'m not crying._

Steve focused his glare on her, starting to rise out of his seat as he said, "Woman, I will not be mocked in my own damn home by some ungrateful little—"

 _Well, I guess this is what I_ _'m doing tonight._ Jack threw his smile back on. "I was just laughing at the thought of you being a cape."

Everyone stared at Jack. Steve was the first to find his voice. "What did you just say to me?" he asked incredulously.

Jack stood up. "You're barely a super. And you are absolutely _not_ a cape." Steve stood, grabbing Jack's shirt and lifting him off the floor. "And if you kill me, or even just break one of my fragile normal-boy bones, drunk and wearing that uniform, you won't even be a sheriff either." Steve's face darkened, but he didn't move. "You'll be in Super-Max, and _they_ won't care that you're only D-class, or that you were only a cop for a day." Jack smiled wide. "And then you'll be me."

Steve was selfish and a bully, but he wasn't stupid, even drunk. He put Jack down. "I'm gonna sober up, and then I'm gonna beat you _exactly_ enough that you can go to school tomorrow."

Jack nodded. "And by the way, Steve? _That_ was what 'talking back' sounds like."

"Sit the fuck down and eat your dinner."

The next half hour was a study of looks. Emma looked at him with pity: in her eyes, he'd brought this on himself, but she wasn't cruel and didn't enjoy the thought of Jack being in pain, no matter how common it was. Jack's mom alternated between looks of worry and exasperation, as though she were wondering why he couldn't just keep his mouth shut. Jack didn't point out that he _hadn_ _'t_ said anything before the first hit; when Steve felt like hitting him, he found a reason, even if it was just "a look" or "that little shit's tone." Half the time he didn't even wait to hear what Jack had done that he was supposed to be being punished for.

And Steve? Steve glared, tried to be menacing. Tried to intimidate him. But Jack felt he was almost through learning that lesson. He tried to think of a time he had successfully _not_ been beaten, and came up blank. The beatings were coming, would always be coming, didn't really have anything to do with him. No point worrying about them.

Jack enjoyed his dinner and stared out the window at the sandy front yard, wishing for snow. Later, grinning and not crying, that was where he kept looking, thinking of all the fun he and his friends back in Burgess used to have, snow days and snowball fights and sledding and snowmen.

He'd like to show Emma some day. Poor thing had never even _seen_ snow. 8 years old and her father had never once found the time to take the girl up to Bear Mountain? That was just inhuman.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _I guess I was about 11? I had been in SoCal a couple of years at that point, and I just remember looking out the window one hot winter day and missing the snow. It was like_ _…_

 _(Jack Frost laughs a bit self-consciously)_

… _a yearning, I guess? Like, I knew what a snow day was, knew the feeling of packing fresh powder into a snowball, and I looked out at this literal desert and thought, "This place could use some more fun. That's what I want my breakthrough to be. Fun."_

 _(Suddenly, his mouth forms an O and he lifts one hand to cover it, raising both eyebrows and affecting a scandalized air)_

 _Good thing I didn_ _'t end up like Euphoria, huh?_

 _(The audience and host laugh, but Snow Queen doesn_ _'t join in; eventually, Jack Frost removes the hand from in front of his mouth to wave it lazily in the air, conjuring a mini cloud over his head that gently begins to snow)_

 _Zapping pleasure straight into someone_ _'s cranium sounds great and all, but nothing beats the ability to make your own winter wonderland._

 _(Snow Queen is looking at Jack Frost with surprising intensity, and says,_ _"I suppose everyone got what they deserved." He looks surprised, and then with a rakish grin he's leaning practically out of his chair to grab her hand)_

 _I guess so._

 _(Snow Queen startles a bit, then blushes and huffs, looking to the side while the fangirls coo and scream; she doesn_ _'t pull her hand back)_

ooooooooooooooooooooo

TW: Child abuse (verbal, physical, non-sexual).


	6. Chapter 6

"Good morning, Elsa. You can call me Dr. Lai."

Her smile was a little too wide for Elsa's taste. At the glance Elsa shot the very conspicuous camera sitting on a tripod in one corner of the room, the doctor continued, "We videotape all superhuman examinations, but we're particularly excited about what we've heard regarding _your_ skill set. I've already received a request from some of my colleagues for a copy!"

Elsa frowned, thinking of her 'skill set'—and her sister in the hospital.

Dr. Lai's smile faltered, and she had the grace to look contrite for a moment before her smile returned, slightly strained. "Well, let's start with what you already know, shall we?"

And so it began. Snow, frost, ice; atmospheric, and from her hands—and the good doctor appeared particularly surprised when Elsa froze the floor with a tap of her foot, ice spreading outward in a giant snowflake pattern, then rushing in to fill in the negative space in the fractals, ending with a hexagon thirty feet across, solid but with its pattern still clearly visible in different shades of blue.

After that, she got pushy.

Freeze the air without pointing. Chill it, but don't freeze it. Move it. Move it without freezing it. Make ice over there. Move it from there to here. Freeze as fast as you can. Freeze as much as you can. Don't let it melt (for this one, she produced a mask and a blowtorch, handing Elsa her own set of dark goggles). Chill this alcohol. Freeze the alcohol. Move the alcohol. Many of these tasks Elsa had no trouble with, despite never having tried them before; others she found completely impossible, but no matter the result, the doctor continued undeterred, always with another test.

By the time the doctor had a man (who looked suspiciously like Geoffrey except for the hair, and smiled at her kindly but didn't say anything) bring in a melon, Elsa was ready to scream, but good girls did not throw tantrums.

"Goodness, Mai, did you keep the poor thing in here all morning?" Elsa turned at the voice behind her and stared. A woman with purple eyes and blue and green hair down to her shoulders, with a blue and green bodysuit to match, was in the doorway.

Not standing in the doorway. Floating. With, apparently, the aid of a pair of wings coming out of her back.

"Tia, this girl is amazing! Whatever we thought about cold-elemental breakthroughs—we've never had anyone at her level before! I swear, this child is redefining the entire—"

"Mai," the woman—fairy?—Tia cut her off. "She's not going anywhere. You'll have weeks and weeks to—" she cut her eyes at Elsa apologetically, "—to study her, but perhaps it's time for a break?"

Dr. Lai appeared scandalized. "Oh heavens, no, we can't stop now! We're not even to the physical tests yet; we'll be at this for _hours_ more—"

Elsa felt her eye twitch at that, but luckily Tia cut her off again, "I'm sure the poor thing having some food and a bit of a rest won't interfere with her results at all, will they?"

The doctor looked like she wanted to disagree, but couldn't think of a proper reason.

Tia continued the attack, smiling and nodding. "In fact, I'll wager she does better on the physical tests if she's not exhausted."

At the word 'exhausted', Dr. Lai turned back to Elsa, eyeing her up and down, eyes widening. "Oh, dear. I… suppose we have been at this rather a long time, haven't we?" she said a bit sheepishly. "Yes, I suppose we should take a break. And… and you shouldn't be doing physical activity right after eating, either," she said generously.

Tia beamed at her. "I'll have her back by three!" she said, darting into the room and behind Elsa, then landing and practically shoving her out of the room.

Once they were safely out in the hall and the door was closed, Tia and Elsa breathed identical sighs of relief. Elsa looked at Tia in curiosity as the woman grinned back, then began flying again, moving down the hallway backward as she faced Elsa, who followed.

"Sorry about Dr. Lai. She—all of the super doctors, really—they're absolutely mad about their research. I guess that's just the type we attracted." She gave a sympathetic half-smile. "They're all like that, unfortunately. But! It's never as bad as this first examination again, so at least there's that!"

Elsa took in a breath to respond, then realized she had nothing to say and froze, wildly trying to think of something polite.

"Oh! Goodness, where are my manners?" Tia slowed her backward movement, raising her legs and lowering her altitude as she extended a hand. "I'm Tia—or Toothiana, if you prefer." She grinned, showing perfect, white teeth.

"Elsa," she said gratefully, shaking Tia's hand.

"I manage the Guardians' administrative side," Tia continued as she smoothly backed into an elevator and dropped to the ground.

Elsa's heart leapt into her throat as thoughts she'd been too busy to have (wretched woman and her tests had at least had some benefit) suddenly came back to her. "Does that mean—can you tell me what's happening to Anna?" she asked.

Tia smiled brightly. "Sandwiches, information, and more: all await in my office above!" she said, pushing a button.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa felt like she would throw up the sandwich she had just eaten. "She won't remember my powers at all?"

Tia watched her with sad eyes from the other side of her desk. "The damage to her mind would be extensive if she were to unlock the memories of how she lost the leg. Ice leads to freezing, freezing leads to the accident. We're lucky she was already about to loose a tooth. If I didn't take enough this first time, we might have to wait weeks or months before I could remove her memories again—if I could at all, if it would even help at that point. This way is best."

Elsa stared at the floor, thinking of all the good memories Anna was losing as well. Every snowman. Every moment of wonder. Every happy hour spent in the basement, giggling and throwing snowballs. All gone, because of her mistake.

"Unfortunately, the news gets worse before it gets better," Tia continued. Elsa looked up, dejected. Tia smiled sympathetically, then went on, "You won't be able to to see your sister for a while. Your parents will get this talk from me tonight, but the short of it is that you'll be staying here, with us, for at least the next few weeks while we work on your control."

Elsa's mouth felt dry. "I can't see Anna? Why not?"

"Part of it is, again, because we're afraid of triggering her memories of last night, but also because… well, to be honest, I'm more than a little worried about _your_ mental health as well. And I can't exactly take your memories away like I did with your sister."

"I—I wouldn't want to lose the memories of what I did!" Elsa said hotly.

Tia was eyeing her critically. "You should. See, but that's what I'm talking about. You take your big sister role seriously, very seriously, which is great, but… Here you are, willfully holding on to bad memories because of the all-important lesson that trauma taught you about control. Which is a very adult thought to have, but not exactly healthy for anyone, and especially for a child. My point is, a part of you thinks you failed last night—" she spoke over Elsa's attempt to interrupt her, "—and whether you did or not, the _thought_ that you did, and the thoughts that come after, are not conducive to your learning control. So, no Anna for a while."

Elsa was quiet while she thought.

"Hey," Tia said, waiting until Elsa looked up before giving her a small smile, "I said there was good news too, didn't I? When your training is complete, and when Anna has had some time to get used to the idea of not having her natural leg anymore and using a prosthetic, you'll go home and you can tell her about your powers again. And if she remembers the accident at that point, well, the worst part of that will probably be hurt feelings over keeping secrets."

Elsa considered that for a long moment, before saying in a small voice, "What if she hates me?"

Tia tilted her head. "Does that sound like her?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Elsa shook her head. "Anna doesn't hate anyone."

Tia smiled brightly. "Then I think you'll be fine. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but you're sisters. You'll work it out."

Elsa let that thought sit in her head for a while, let it wander around and make itself comfortable. It fit. She nodded at Tia, returning the woman's smile with a smaller but no less genuine one of her own. Then she remembered something else Tia had said. "Prosthetic?"

Tia's smile widened into a grin, and she pushed a button on the phone on her desk. It rang twice, and then a boy's voice answered, _"Yeah?"_

"Hiccup," Tia said, "can you come to my office, please?"

" _Uh, now? Does it have to be, like, right now? I'm sort of in the middle of something—it's not something I can't walk away from, well, I can't, but he—it—would be with me, on hold sort of, and_ wow _is that appropriate_ _—"_

Tia cut him off, "It's not an emergency, but now, if you can."

" _Coming!"_

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa stared at Hiccup. It wasn't polite, but, Elsa felt, it was justified.

Teenager, about 14? Brown hair past his ears. And, apparently, a robot. Or mostly robot. About 80% robot? His skinny right arm and disproportionately tiny head peeked out of a bulky metal body, gray and covered in battle scars.

Also, there was some sort of giant leech-snake enveloping his robotic left arm to the elbow, trying—with no success—to devour him.

"You _kept_ one of those things?" Tia asked incredulously.

"Hey, Fleshworks was crazy, but he was my kinda crazy—well, no, I mean, not _my_ kind my kind, but Verne-kind my kind, y'know?" the boy tried to explain.

 _How did his body get all those scratches and burns without him losing his right arm? Or his_ head? Elsa wondered.

With a _schlup_ and a loud pop, the creature tried to inch its way further up Hiccup's metal arm, seeming to making no ground.

"Burn it," Tia said, eyes closed and gripping her temples with one spread hand.

"Aw, Tia! But there's so much I could learn, if I could just study—"

" _Burn it,"_ she repeated, and there was no arguing this time.

One giant foot lifted and tried to scuff the hardwood floor, putting a dent in it. Hiccup winced. "Yes, ma'am."

Elsa finally spoke up, "Um… are you… how did you… a _part-_ robot breakthrough?" The last part came out a squeak.

Hiccup tilted his head and gave her a confused look while Tia laughed. "Right," she said, "Introductions. The boy standing here in _half_ his battle armor so he can run _idiotic_ tests on an _abomination_ that almost ate a train is Hiccup, our gadgeteer, or Verne-type, if you like. Hiccup, this is Elsa, the ice breakthrough Bunny picked up last night.

Hiccup perked up, looking at Elsa with interest. "Whoa, ice powers?" he said, taking a step toward her. "Wait, but how does that even work? I mean, cold isn't even a thing, like of course we think it's a thing but—fire, light, heat, plasma, motion, THAT'S energy, but cold is just—"

Elsa jumped in her chair as Tia slammed her palm on her desk and glared at him. "Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, you take your First Law of Thermodynamics and you get the HELL out of my office!"

Hiccup stared at her, wide-eyed and mouth open, until she leaned in with a smile, tilting her head down and slightly to the side, saying, "Kidding!" in a teasing voice.

Hiccup continued to work his mouth for a moment before finding his voice. "That… that's not even my name!"

Tia raised her eyebrows as though in surprise. "Oh?"

"Okay," Hiccup said, getting into it, "'Horrendous' is my codename and belongs nowhere in my actual name, and also, 'the third'? Who's the second?! You need a second before a third!"

"Traditionally, 'the second' would be called Junior," Elsa said solemnly, lips quirking. Tia glanced at her and flashed a quick smile.

"Also not a person who exists!" Hiccup said emphatically.

"But really," Tia said, as though the argument were over, "are you one to complain about violating the laws of physics? Violation is what you _do._ _"_

Hiccup winced. "Don't—can we not say 'violate'? That makes it sound so bad. I just, sometimes the rules are a little wrong and I bend them a bit—"

"That's not how rules work," Elsa said, feeling the humor leave her. _Do try to keep that in mind from now on._

 _Like I_ _'ll ever forget again,_ she responded to herself.

Tia cleared her throat, and Elsa realized both she and Hiccup were watching her. Tia turned to Hiccup. "Take off the suit. I want to show her your leg." At Elsa's confused glance, Tia gave her a reassuring smile. "You'll understand when you see it," she said.

Hiccup looked vastly uncomfortable. "Uh, about that," he began, "I'm not exactly, under the suit… it's very tight-fitting, if you understand, very _very_ tight-fitting… skin-tight, if you catch my drift, _literally skin_ _—"_

Tia sighed. "How long does it take you to get out of that thing?"

"Less than 20 minutes, probably."

Tia rolled her eyes and stabbed a finger at her phone. "Bunny," she said into the speaker, "can you help Hiccup change into some shorts in my office? By which I mean bring him clothes."

" _I ain't his bloody nursemaid. Kid's 13; I think he's figured out the basics of dressing himself by now."_

"Almost 14! So very close to 14!" Hiccup called into the speaker, half-turning and reaching behind himself with his human hand to open the door to Tia's office.

Elsa could practically hear Bunny's eyes rolling in the silence.

"Please, Bunny?" Tia pleaded. "He's in a suit and we're waiting on him for Elsa."

And then Hiccup and Bunny were standing in front of the armor, Bunny in his bodysuit but no cap, Hiccup in khaki cargo shorts and holding a blue t-shirt in his hands. Hiccup was giggling and moving away from Bunny's hand at his ribs, but at Tooth's chuckle, he looked at her in wide-eyed mortification, _shrieking_ and bringing his arms and shirt to his chest while Bunny roared with laughter.

Hiccup leaped at Bunny with his arms spread so wide they were behind him, saying, "Take me back!"

Bunny fell over holding his stomach. "No, I think you're good!" he gasped from the floor.

Hiccup didn't seem to know what to say to that, staring at him with eyes wide. "You did that on purpose!" he accused.

Bunny managed to stop laughing long enough to say, "Mate, YOU moved away from ME!"

"I'M TICKLISH!"

Tia, still with a smile quirking her lips, cleared her throat. At the sound, Bunny visibly started trying to control his laughter, climbing to his feet while the occasional chuckle continued to slip out. Hiccup kicked the door closed and finally pulled the shirt over his head, his whole chest and face red.

"Right," Tia said. "So, Hiccup, the girl from the hospital this morning is Elsa's sister."

Hiccup's mouth formed an O of understanding and he came and took a seat in the other chair in front of Tia's desk opposite Elsa, then started fiddling with the back of his left leg near the bottom of his calf as Elsa looked on in interest.

And he took his leg off. Elsa's eyes widened as she watched him pick it up in his hands, hefting it a bit as he stared at the remaining stump.

"The, ah… the day of the Event," he began, "I was at Blacksmithing Camp, if you can believe it, and…" his face paled as he ran his hand over the stump.

"You don't have to tell me," Elsa said quickly, reaching out a hand toward the boy. He looked at her gratefully, then saw her hand and misunderstood, passing her the leg.

"Well, I guess you can imagine, molten metal and blackouts don't exactly mix—But! Bam, instant breakthrough, and I had everything I needed right there to make, well, at least a rudimentary replacement. Replacements." He grimaced. "I wasn't the only unlucky wannabe tinkerer that day—though I guess I was the only _lucky_ one, come to think of it."

Elsa was examining the leg in her hands, fingertips sliding over the surprisingly skin-like—if hair- and pore-less—surface, before shifting her grip to flex the ankle. Hiccup watched her curiosity and amazement grow the longer she examined the leg, until she finally spoke, face and voice tinged with doubt, "This is rudimentary?"

He gave her a self-deprecating smile. "Oh, no, I've been working on this for months. Prosthetics have kinda become my thing. No, the one—ones I made that day had hardly any electronics at all. More pirate than Six Million Dollar Man."

Tia spoke up. "'Hardly' any electronics, he says. Ignoring the fact that he somehow _started_ with _no_ electronics." She was smiling fondly at him.

He shrugged. "Well, we all have our gifts. Like, literally, all of us in this room. You fly and take bad memories, I can build anything from anything, she freezes stuff, and Bunny is supernaturally jerky."

"We really need to work on your smack talk, mate. I'm offended by how uninsulting that was."

" _Anyway,"_ , Hiccup said, turning back to Elsa as she handed him back his leg, "Yeah, I went to see your sister this morning. We need to wait for her—her stump," and Elsa flinched, making _him_ wince, "to heal first, but a cute li'l munchkin like that? I've already got ideas for something _special_ for her."

" _Denied!"_ Tia barked, slamming her hand on her desk, and this time Elsa really thought she was serious. "No special! Leg, knee, ankle. Skin-looking stuff. The end."

"Aw, Tia, come on—"

"Toothiana," she cut him off, and Elsa watched them glare at each other, wondering at the significance of the name change.

"Toothiana," Hiccup finally said, a note of deference in his voice, "I need to practice. The stuff I can do now is good, but there's clear room for improvement. I'm never going to get better if you won't let me try new things."

Toothiana watched him, not saying a word.

Hiccup's composure cracked. "I need training! And I'm the only one who can give it to me! North fights, Bunny runs, Gothel has her craft—and this is what I do."

"Kid's got a point, Tooth," Bunny jumped in, and Hiccup gave him a grateful look. "Half the reason we have these teams is so we can have a safe place to find out what we can do. You really think _Gothel_ _'s_ here for the joy of civic duty? Not bloody likely. None of us fully understand our powers yet, not even you. We're all trying to learn, here."

Toothiana seemed to be weighing his words, tilting her head from side to side. Hiccup and Bunny watched her think, waiting for her decision. Finally, she stilled, eyes on Hiccup, and said, "Fine. Draw up the plans for a normal prosthetic for Anna, and then—" she spoke over Hiccup, who seemed to be grumbling his way into an argument, "—and then show me your proposed additions."

Hiccup seemed somewhat mollified.

"Hiccup," Toothiana continued, and she seemed to have dropped her supervisor persona somewhat, seemed a little more like the big sister from before, "the work you do for Mass Gen's Transplant and Replacement Center is good publicity for supers, publicity we desperately need. Not just the Guardians, but all supers. And one of _my_ responsibilities—if I'm being honest, probably the greatest one, more so than overseeing the team as a whole or my own work with trauma victims, since that's secret—my greatest responsibility is ensuring that your work continues to _be_ good publicity."

Hiccup was looking at his own leg again, turning it over in his hands. "Oh."

Bunny spoke up, "Think about it, kiddo. The city bought us this nice, new building, and they pay us salaries, but there's a reason all the fliers are out on patrol day and night. We're still trying to make super seem normal, make the normal of today look better than the normal of last year. Is getting baseballs out of gutters the best use of Apex's time? No, but it makes the guy who could break a man in half with his bare hands seem friendly, gives people a reason to think that maybe it's a good thing some folks can fly now. And we need that. And you, Horrendous, despite your terrible choice in codename, are a large part of this effort."

Hiccup was smiling now, running his fingers over the faux skin. "Right."

Tia stood, her wings appearing behind her, and started to fly around the room, flitting back and forth between her desk and a filing cabinet as she worked her way through some documents. "And now," she said, "I think it's time for you, Elsa, to be getting back to Dr. Lai." Elsa felt her stomach sink. "Bunny, will you take her down to Mai in the training room?"

"Physical test?" He was looking at her with pity. "Just remember, you'll only have to do this once."

Elsa felt her stomach drop a bit more, wondering if his comment meant the physical test was going to be _worse,_ somehow. They left the office, Hiccup still sitting and reattaching his leg, Tia watching her with her own pitying smile as she floated in the air, manila folders held to her chest.

"This test has a 100% survival rate so far!" Tia called after them unencouragingly.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _Those wings aren_ _'t why you fly, by the way._

 _(Tooth turns to look at Hiccup)_

 _The big butterfly wings flapping away behind you? (he raises his hands to his shoulders and flaps them as though she might not know what he_ _'s talking about, as though his gesture might help) Just hovering there like you are, there's no way those filmy things are generating, what, 525 newtons of force—(he notices her glare)—500 newtons of force using just our bog standard physics._

 _(Tooth stares at him)_

 _Not with this gentle hum and nonexistent breeze._

 _(Tooth continues to stare at Hiccup)_

 _It_ _'d be more like standing in a room with a helicopter._

 _(Tooth appears unmoved)_

 _I_ _'m just saying, I'm not the only one playing it fast and loose with physics._

 _(Tooth still hasn_ _'t blinked)_

 _I_ _'ll go incinerate the worm now._

 _(Toothiana, enunciating precisely: Thank you.)_


	7. Chapter 7

Elsa read the summary Dr. Lai had printed for her, frowning. "You… shot me?" she asked, rubbing the sore spot on her back.

"With an air gun," the doctor confirmed with a nod. "The second-to-last shot was a metal BB; the last one was a nail. You're near the low end of D-class in terms of toughness, which means you're not nearly bulletproof, but you'd probably be fine if you fell down some stairs or dropped a hammer on your foot. You'll also heal from wounds and sickness somewhat faster than a normal person. Pretty standard for a kinetic, from what we've seen so far."

She almost sounded like she was accusing Elsa of being boring, but started to perk up as she continued, "What _is_ interesting is your active power set. We've seen people with ice powers, and cold powers, and water powers, but never in quite the combination you have. You can make anything cold within a range of a little over 30 feet, although," she eyed Elsa critically, "you are a little inconsistent with whether or not you need to be able to see the space to affect it."

The doctor paused, and Elsa shrank as she recognized the glint in Dr. Lai's eye that meant she'd thought of another test. The doctor continued, "If what you're making cold is water in its various forms, you can move it—limited aquakinesis, if you will. And, finally—and this is the most interesting part—you can _generate_ _and vanish_ ice or snow with your hands, holding it in place at the point of its creation, or imparting spontaneous ballistic motion from that point. Oh, and you can create planes of ice with your feet."

The doctor's eyes were almost sparkling. Elsa felt like she had to say something. "And this is… special?"

"Oh, heavens yes! The typical cryokinetic—I say typical even though we've only seen a handful so far, but they have been largely consistent—can make anything within their range cold, while the two supers with ice powers we've seen can generate and vanish ice. But those two different power groups are _proper subsets_ of your powers! And aquakinesis would be a third, if only your ability to control water weren't proportional to how much you have personally chilled it. A discrepancy, but a fascinating one, nonetheless. I wonder, if we had the time, if we could discover—but of course, we _do_ have the time!" The doctor's mouth grew into a wide smile, fantastic and horrifying, and Elsa quailed in her seat. "I'll bet by the end of the summer we'll have you—"

A man slammed the door open. He was white-haired, old, but built like a mountain. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his arms covered in tattoos. He had to duck his head and turn sideways to get through the door, and on his back Elsa could see a pair of wicked-looking axes.

Elsa ran to him.

"You are Snowflake?" he asked in a Russian accent.

Elsa turned to look at Dr. Lai, then turned back, reaching out toward him and nodding her head.

The mountain smiled at her, and his appearance changed from ax murderer to Santa Claus. He bent down and with surprising swiftness scooped her up so she was sitting on an arm as thick as a tree branch. He held his other hand in front of her and said, "I am North. Come, we train!"

 _Salvation._ Elsa smiled, putting her hand in his where it vanished during their brief shake. When she had her hand back, she put it on his shoulder to steady herself, then tensed when she saw she was leaking frost over his shirt. He saw it too and smiled, a hint of wonder in his eyes as he scraped the frost off with a fingernail and blew it into the air. Elsa grinned and shot a quick flurry of snow after it, and North barked a quick laugh.

"Wait, what?" The doctor seemed to have recovered.

"Mai," North said, turning a severe look on the doctor. "Is physical test finished?"

Dr. Lai tilted her chin up. "I still have a number of tests I need to—"

North cut her off. "You sent Tia test results?"

The doctor winced. "I—"

North continued, implacable as an avalanche, "Is almost time for Tia's meeting with Snowflake's parents. Send test results, and go home. We work again tomorrow."

Dr. Lai took a breath, looking as though she were about to argue, then seemed to think better of it with a wry twist of her lips. "Did Tia send you to train the girl or to rescue her?"

North answered with a wide grin, and the doctor's smile became a little more genuine. He waved and then turned and exited the room, being careful not to bump Elsa against the door frame on the way out. "AND for test results!" he called back toward the room.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa's training began with learning to limit her powers. North was the team's field leader and main physical heavy hitter, an A-class Ajax-type able to deal and take massive amounts of damage, so it made sense for Elsa to practice her control over her touch-based frost generation with him. Her frost never bothered him, and in fact, for all that he encouraged her to control it, he still seemed to enjoy seeing it when it slipped out.

North was a jolly bear of a man, but also surprisingly tactile, constantly slapping people on the back or pulling them into hugs, and he seemed to delight in carrying Elsa around on his arm or shoulders. It had been a while since Elsa's father had carried her around like that, but she found that she didn't mind. He called her Snowflake and he picked her up and carried her around like she was a doll, or perhaps a cat, but he never refused her right to be put down and walk when she felt like it. They played games with cards and songs and a great deal of hitting each other's hands.

"Is this really going to teach me control?" Elsa asked once, rubbing her stinging hands.

North nodded toward her red hands and said, "Your hands, they hurt? They are red?" Elsa nodded. "But not broken? Bones are still bones, not dust?" Elsa's brow furrowed, and North stood, picking up his chair, one of the solid, heavy, wooden things that were left in each room in the Workshop specifically to support his massive frame. He hefted it in the air a moment before grabbing one leg and pulling. It popped as it separated from the cross sections connecting it to the other legs, then the seat, then the slats up the back, and the rest of the chair fell to pieces when he dropped it to the ground. Elsa stared wide-eyed at the piece of wood in North's hands, the once-leg still with a few splinters hanging off it to indicate that it had been part of a larger whole. It was taller than she was, and thicker than her leg.

"This," he said, gripping it by either end, "is your spine." And he twisted it, the wood cracking as it split around the middle in a jagged forest of spikes. He pulled the two pieces apart with a snap, one long strip of wood that hadn't been separated by the twist sticking farther out than the rest. North tossed the larger piece onto the table and dropped the other into the pile with the rest of the ruined chair.

"I, too, practice control," he said, leaning over the table. "With every hug, with every…" and he reached out with both hands, tapping her hand gently with one and cracking the table in half with the other, "…touch, I practice. Is work?"

Elsa watched the two halves of the table fall inward as it collapsed to the floor, the chair leg settling in the middle. She considered the ruins of the table and chair, and her hands. For North, destroying the chair and table had looked effortless, as easy as standing up. The real effort was in controlling the amount of force he used—the hardest thing he had probably done just now was touch her without crippling her. From his point of view, she doubted there was much difference between the force required to hug her and the force required to hug her in half. But he still did it, and he did it perfectly; she had never been the slightest bit hurt when he hugged her or picked her up, never really been injured when they slapped each other as part of their training games. He sometimes slapped Bunny and Hiccup on the back hard enough to make them stumble, but considering what North had just done, she was now sure that was intentional. This was what she needed. She needed to be able to touch other people with perfect control of her powers. She looked North in the eye. "It works."

North smiled. "Good. Then we train!" he said, digging through the rubble for their cards. They set up at another table, North settled across two chairs meant for lesser men, and Elsa redoubled her efforts to control her powers during the brief periods their skin touched when they slapped hands.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Hiccup was willing to train with her in his suit, but something about the idea of touching that lifeless metal made her uncomfortable, and out of the suit he was physically a normal boy, even more fragile than her. Still, he was the only person anywhere near her age while she was confined to the Workshop, and she ended up spending a lot of time with him in his private lab on one of the basement levels, especially once summer break started. She liked listening to the clanking and whirring of the various contraptions in the background or watching him work when he got in a creative mood, constructing the most marvelous impossibilities with methodical patience and hard work.

"What if I just made you a suit?" he asked suddenly one day.

Elsa blinked, looking up from her book, and stared at him a moment. Conversations with Hiccup could often have hours- or days-long pauses in them while he turned them over in his mind before suddenly restarting them. She spent a moment trying to figure out if this was a continuation of a previous conversation and came up blank, deciding it was the beginning of a new one. "A suit?"

"For your frost powers," he said. "I could make a suit that would, like, lock in your frost powers, or maybe I could install a switch that would let you turn them directly on or off…"

Elsa took a moment to place a bookmark and put her book down while she thought. "First, I don't want to be locked in with my frost powers; I'd freeze myself. I don't seem to be able to hurt myself with my own cold, but it isn't fun, and even Dr. Lai refused to continue testing under 94 degrees Fahrenheit until she can get some special equipment. And for the second idea, how would a switch in a suit turn my powers on or off?"

Hiccup frowned. "So no suit, I guess. Oh, but the switch wouldn't go in a suit. We'd just jack it directly in to your central nervous system. Probably with an extension out to your hip or something for easy access," Hiccup became more animated as he fleshed out his profane schematic. "Ooh, or maybe like a button, and we could run the conduits down your arm and put the button in your palm so you could activate it like Spider-Man!"

Elsa was getting used to conversations with Hiccup taking mad scientist detours, and had learned how to handle them. "Denied," she said, with a firm look.

He scowled with a bit of an affected air of petulance. "You and Tia are spending way too much time with each other." He dropped the act and looked up at the ceiling. Elsa let him think. Eventually, he continued, "What about just gloves?"

Elsa opened her mouth, then paused, tilting her head. "What kind of gloves?" she asked.

"Sort of like the suit idea, but just for your hands. I mean, that's the only thing you're really having trouble controlling, right? The frost when you touch things? So we'll just lock that in, and since it won't be your whole body, less chance of hypothermia, right?"

Elsa considered this. Maybe with gloves, she could go home early, could see Anna… and her parents. Her mother. Her father. Elsa's heart clenched as she thought of the last time she had seen her parents, during their first and only visit to the Workshop when they came in to Boston for Anna's physical therapy at Mass Gen. Their worry and sadness, the lack of their usual sureness as they interacted with the Workshop staff. Their discomfort. The hint of eagerness to leave. The relief she sensed in their silence when she told them on the phone that she was too busy training for them to visit again.

Elsa forced a small smile. "I don't think it would work. I still might be able to get frostbite, and even without the frost touch, I have atmospheric powers that I need to be able to control." Hiccup looked like he was about to argue, and she cut him off, "Look, can we not talk about any stupid suit or gloves or whatever else anymore?"

Hiccup looked hurt, and Elsa felt a stab of guilt. She loved talking to him—he was smart, and funny, and he liked to argue but in a friendly way: his arguments had nothing to do with her being a girl or younger than him, and everything to do with logic, which she appreciated. Her calling his ideas stupid instead of properly refuting them was a breach of their conversational etiquette. But as much as Elsa liked her new friend, she didn't want to talk with him about about her family; she had enough trouble talking about how she felt with Tia. She knew Hiccup had some trouble of his own with his father, but she had never asked him about it precisely because she didn't want to share her own issues.

"Hiccup," she said, and his face had already changed from hurt to stubborn. She took a breath and said, "Hiccup, I'm sorry I snapped at you. But there are no shortcuts to our powers. I need to learn control. The gloves, and even the suit… they sound nice, but they wouldn't be real solutions. So please don't bring them up again."

Hiccup didn't look angry anymore, staring at the table. "I live in the Workshop, you know." Elsa stilled, didn't say anything. "My dad and I—we were never really close," he began to blurt out, speaking faster and faster, "but the breakthrough—I mean, day 1 it was just insane and he couldn't take it and I was _different_ and—but then, you know, two months later I had it all under control and we had superhero teams and a damn government agency just for us and I'm a member of the _state militia_ with a job and last month I did my taxes and my occupation was "Superhero", and everything seems so normal to me but I—my dad," and his voice broke, "hasn't been to see me still."

Elsa's eyes and heart burned, but she was still afraid of moving, speaking, being drawn into this conversation.

"I called and he hung up."

Elsa reached out a hand, froze, concentrated and touched his shoulder.

He didn't make her meet his eyes, but he kept talking, "And I guess some dumb part of me thought maybe—" he laughed hoarsely, "—maybe the problem was that I had just _waited too long,_ but if you could see your family sooner, you wouldn't end up like me." He stopped talking and looked at the ceiling, blinking and avoiding her eyes as he took a few breaths. "I know—I noticed, you know—that you don't want to talk about it." He finally glanced at her, a desperate moment. "But can I talk to you?"

They didn't train together, but Elsa spent a lot of time in Hiccup's lab.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _Tooth: We have a training room._

 _North: Yes._

 _Tooth: Full of training equipment._

 _North: Yes._

 _Tooth:_ _'Full to the brim', one might say._

 _North: Is quite well-appointed._

 _Tooth: Dummies, mats_ _…_

 _North: Weights, a track_ _—the sauna!_

 _Tooth: Yes, the sauna. And, of course, logs, rebar, I-beams, and concrete blocks._

 _North: Ah._

 _Tooth: The destructibles, if you will._

 _North: Is good name._

 _Tooth: They_ _'re not cheap, of course._

 _North: Nothing ever is, with government._

 _Tooth:_ _But certainly much cheaper than the artisanal oak pieces—so rare!—that we put in certain special rooms._

 _North: Like_ _… sitting room? Is that right name?_

 _Tooth: Yes, that one room where we keep important people who are waiting to see me. Oh, and, of course, one of those specially-made chairs_ _—again, so expensive!—just for you._

 _North: Is also where we keep cards._

 _Tooth: Kept. But yes, that room, that used to have such nice furniture in it, and now has still a lot of nice furniture, but also some other stuff? Like kindling. Or toothpicks._

 _North:_ _…_

 _Tooth:_ _…_

 _North: Ah, I am remembering something!_

 _Tooth: Oh?_

 _North: This morning, while diligently performing my duty_ _—assigned by you—to train Snowflake, I—as field leader—performed field training exercise. Some furniture was damaged. Very unfortunate._

 _Tooth: A field training exercise._

 _North: Yes. In field._

 _Tooth: In the sitting room, in the middle of the Workshop._

 _North: Is little strange, but anywhere can be field, if there is field training exercise._

 _Tooth: What a fortuitously circuitous definition!_

 _North: Is very convenient!_

 _Tooth: Don_ _'t ever do it again._

 _North: Yes._

ooooooooooooooooooooo

AN: It's finals week and everything is on fire and I almost forgot to post this today. I haven't had the time to obsessively go over this a dozen times like I did the other chapters, but I still like it because we get to see some character interaction. Hope you enjoyed it!


	8. Chapter 8

If North was touchy but respectful, Bunny was the opposite. The Australian was standoffish and abrasive, but took his duty in training Elsa infuriatingly seriously.

Since North was helping her learn to use and limit her powers in controlled environments, Bunny decided he would help her learn control by surprising her at all hours of the day and night.

The first few times he suddenly appeared in front of her in a blur and a gust of wind, he shook off the snow, tutting and flicking her forehead.

When that stopped surprising her, he started approaching her from behind, peeking his head over her shoulder with a ghastly moan and rolled-back eyes or some such nonsense, and she only really shrieked the first time. He wore a Halloween mask, once; she froze and shattered it in a flash of irritation and regretted nothing. She kept throwing snowballs at him even after his appearances no longer surprised her because it pleased her to do so, but he eventually figured it out, claiming that her grins were too wicked for a girl with such a sweet face. She told him his abeyance for saving her sister's life would only last so long.

He once woke her in her room in the middle of the night, his face lit by a flashlight from below. He did not do it again.

Several long, harrowing weeks after she had started her training at the Workshop, he finally told her she could no longer be surprised into using her powers by a superhuman speedster moving at ten times normal speed. He even praised her reflexes and her _measured, controlled_ responses.

Then he introduced her to Hypertime, and the nightmare truly began.

The speedsters, like the Altases and Ajaxes, were one of the most consistent superhero types in terms of their powers, despite the lack of an archetypal speedster—a detail that excited the super doctors like Dr. Lai to no end. Speedsters could all speed up their own time by a factor from anywhere between two and ten, and in that sped-up mode they became blurs and left air currents when they moved; but A-class speedsters like Bunny and anyone they touched could enter Hypertime, a frozen world that was almost its own reality, that they could move through but not affect, and when they passed through that realm it was instantaneous to observers.

Bunny began grabbing her from Hypertime, screaming or waving weapons or just staring at her with wide eyes, suddenly nose-to-nose. The first few times she startled and would have filled the room with frost or worse, were it not impossible for her to affect the real world when Bunny was holding her in Hypertime—fortunate for the other people in the room, not all of whom were as durable as her and Bunny. It was an effective way to test her control without putting the people near her at risk; she hated it and spent long hours plotting revenge.

Tia was not amused. "The goal is to give her control, not PTSD. Besides, aren't you just teaching her not to be startled by _you?_ _"_

Bunny rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Y'know, I think you're right. I should get other people to scare her too. Brilliant idea, team leader!"

"Bunny, you know that's not what—" Tia started, and Bunny let her get exactly that far before disappearing. She sighed, then did a double-take when she saw the glare Elsa was giving her.

"Yes, brilliant idea, team leader," Elsa gritted out.

"Oh, don't you start with me too," Tia said.

Elsa's shoulders slumped for a moment as she sighed, then she straightened and said, "Bunny's methods _are_ working, and your idea _is_ a good one. And, if the others can't scare me either," she grimaced, imagining the next few days, "do you think I might be able to go home soon?"

Tia considered a moment. "North seems to think you're fine at this point, and if Bunny signs off as well I guess we can call your training complete."

Elsa eyed the ground pensively, and Tia waited, having become used to Elsa's mannerisms when she was working her way up to something. Elsa spoke tentatively, "Anna's birthday is coming up." She peeked at Tia through her bangs and, seeing the woman's raised eyebrows, added, "Next Monday."

Tia smiled encouragingly. "A whole week? Well, let's see what we can do!"

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Boston had a decent number of capes who were worryingly willing to scare a little girl. Apex took her flying and pretended to drop her. Well, really dropped her, but pretended to have trouble catching her. Elsa glared at him as she tumbled, arms crossed and mouth set in a firm line, and when he settled her gently on the ground she thanked him in a tone that made him shiver, and he winced before shuffling his feet awkwardly and flying off.

Fleet tried Bunny's popping-out-of-Hypertime-right-in-front-of-her trick and seemed disappointed when Elsa walked around her without breaking stride, patting her on the arm as she passed by. Orion, a genuine teleporter, tried the same move, with similar results. Mirage gave her terrible visions, putting her in situations where she had already lost control to see if she would regain it or fall into an ever-worsening destructive spiral. This took a few tries to overcome, but eventually he declared that she was safe from any situation she was likely to face naturally; there would be no point in continuing unless she were actually preparing to fight mental attacks from a supervillain.

Gothel gave her a potion that induced nightmares, and she began to dread going to sleep at night, but by the end of the week the witch said that Elsa could control herself so long as the nightmares weren't supernaturally enhanced.

Pitch Black, looking like a charcoal drawing of a man except for his shining golden eyes, loomed to the side and watched impassively as he induced a full on panic attack as bad as any she had ever had before, that left her curled in a ball and gasping for breath, her skin clammy and burning and tingling, and her mouth tasting of pennies. She kept a hold of her powers all through the attack, and when it was over she stood and looked him in the eye through her cold, sweaty bangs and he nodded respectfully with a "Well done," before disappearing into a shadow.

The last test began with a phone call.

Bunny had shown up maskless, in jeans and a tight long-sleeved shirt, saying he was taking her to lunch, but Elsa didn't believe him. Two months stuck in the Workshop and he suddenly decides to take her for a stroll through Boston Common in the middle of the day, surrounded by people? Not likely.

Bunny's cell phone rang and he gave her a shove to indicate he wanted some privacy. She threw a perfunctory scowl over her shoulder and walked toward a fountain, wondering if the call was to coordinate the test, or a ruse to get her away from him. _Great, so I_ _'ve narrowed the test down to something precise or a large area of effect,_ she thought with some amusement. North made tactics look so _easy._

Still nothing by the time she got to the fountain. Elsa sat on the lip of the stone basin and dipped a hand in the water, concentrating on not freezing it or even chilling it at all. She was waving her hand back and forth, watching for the telltale white of forming frost in the currents when she heard a soft _tink_ at her feet. She looked down and saw a beautiful silver arrow with a wicked point stuck in the stone ground, its shaft through one loop of the knot in her shoelaces.

Elsa cast a quick glance around the plaza. No one had noticed that she had just been shot at, including Bunny, who was turned away and still talking on the phone. She almost called out to him, but hesitated, thoughts racing as she continued to scan the area.

If this was an attack, she should alert the closest hero. As a young and vulnerable breakthrough, she might be a target—but who would know who she was? If it were an attack, it was more likely to be an attack on the plaza itself, some supervillain out to start his career with a massacre. But right in front of the Guardians' headquarters? They would have to be insane or stupid or immensely powerful _(with an attack that starts with one arrow?)_ to attempt such a thing, and was that whole chain of probabilities more likely than this just being another test for her? If she asked for help, would she fail? But if it were really part of the test _(Wait, am I even sure there will be a test? Yes, continue),_ Bunny would be watching her, not facing another—

—and then Elsa looked up and saw the second arrow, approaching her head rather quickly. She shot out a hand and caught it in a spear of ice thirty feet long. _Now_ people were noticing, shouting, and Elsa held the ice in the air, already planning the ideal mix of smugness and grace to use when she showed the captured arrow to Bunny, when she noticed three—no, four more arrows heading toward her.

She couldn't drop the existing ice spear—that would be dangerous, and there were civilians around—but her other hand was still in the water. She chilled the fountain enough that she could begin to move it, and it rushed into the air, freezing as it flowed, until she had created a latticed dome out of ice that surrounded her, its holes filled with thin panes of liquid water that were clear as glass. Two arrows hit the ice lattice frame, presumably sticking to it or falling to the ground; the other two passed through those clear windows, and she froze them, meaning to halt the arrows in place—but she hadn't anchored the panes to the frames, and the arrows' momentum pulled the ice windows loose to shatter on the floor. Elsa frowned in disappointment at her failed arrow traps, then froze another pane to hold her ice spear in place. _Don_ _'t stand still in a fight,_ she belatedly remembered North having told her, and tried to move while looking for more incoming arrows—and fell when one shoe didn't follow her, the first arrow still anchoring it to the floor.

She heard Bunny's voice from behind her, a little muffled but shouting, "Els—Snowflake! Snowflake, are you all right in there?" She turned and saw him standing outside the dome, one hand fisted in the collar of a scowling woman's white jacket. The woman had a long honey-blonde braid and was holding a silver bow.

Elsa let one of the panes of cold water fall to half height. "I'm okay. I just fell. Is that the villain?" she said as she carefully stood and extracted her shoe from the arrow.

The woman with the braid scowled harder. "I'm a cape, you brat! I'm here to _help_ you!"

"By shooting at my head?"

"None of those were going to hit you."

Elsa wasn't one to pick fights, but now that she wasn't focused on not dying, she was starting to feel sick, and madder the more she thought about what had just happened. "I'm supposed to be glad the crazy lady with the bow couldn't hit me?"

The crazy lady took her bow in two hands like she might swing it at Elsa, but she only made it one step before Bunny yanked her back. She turned her scowl on him and he glared right back, saying, "Snowflake has a point, Diana."

Diana straightened to her full height and seemed to be trying to glare down at Bunny despite being a full foot shorter. "I could shoot the head off an ant at 300 yards! You think it's a _fluke_ I pinned her first—without touching her?"

"I _think,_ _"_ he gritted out, "you were trying to show off, and somewhere in that demented head of yours the chance of her moving and your _amazing miss_ becoming _horrifying hit_ somehow seemed okay to you. I _think_ you called me and _lied to me_ specifically to distract me so I couldn't catch those arrows _like we discussed,_ and I don't know what the HELL kind of thing you were trying to prove there—"

"You think it's easy being the bow-and-arrow cape? I've got _one thing,_ and if I'm going to stand out I—"

" _This ain't a damn publicity stunt!"_

"We sure about that?" Geoffrey said as he jogged up to them in suit and sunglasses, voice pitched not to carry. He straightened his tie and shot a sharp smile at Bunny and a kinder one at Elsa, eyeing her up and down quickly before turning his head conspicuously to watch the crowd gathering around them in a large circle. Elsa saw quite a few cameras. "If it's not, maybe we should take the rest of this conversation back to the Workshop and let Toothiana handle the rest?"

Elsa hesitated a moment before speaking up. "I can't vanish this ice. We have to wait for it to melt." Geoffrey cocked his head and Bunny shot her a confused look. "This is water from the fountain. I only froze it—I didn't make it, so I can't un-make it."

Diana scoffed. Elsa shot a glare at her, which the woman returned. Elsa smiled sweetly and Bunny was suddenly ten feet to the side, the crowd murmuring. Elsa shot a hand out of the open window in her dome, conjuring ice as fast as she could, a spear that shot out in a blur, tapering to a point just in front of Diana before growing into a pair of thick, dark blue handcuffs. She let the spear fall and the shaft cracked away from the cuffs before shattering on the ground amid a chorus of cries from the crowd.

"Oh, great," Geoffrey said. "This is definitely better."

Diana tried to tug her hands apart, but Elsa concentrated and the cuffs held. The woman turned to stare at Elsa and Elsa stared back. Bunny appeared to be trying to fight off a grin when his phone rang. He answered it, winced, then brought the phone to Elsa. "It's for you."

Elsa eyed the phone a moment, then turned to look at the Workshop, its upper levels visible from across the Common. Was Tia's office facing this way? She took the phone. "Tia?"

" _Elsa."_

"Can you see me?"

" _Assume I can always see you."_

Elsa cleared her throat, trying to think how to start.

" _Are you stuck in there?"_

 _She_ can _see me!_ Elsa thought. She nodded.

Tia sighed through the phone. _"All right, don't panic. We'll get Orion or someone with a flame hand or something to get you out of there. Maybe North can show you how to reinforce that thing and put in a door. We'll work it out. How are you feeling?"_

"I'm fine," Elsa said quickly, then looked around and realized it was true. She felt a swell of pride. "I'm really fine. I did exactly what I meant to do and nothing else—no snow in the air, no frost on the ground."

" _Well, that's good at least,"_ Tia said, and Elsa could hear the warmth in her voice. "All right, here's the plan: snow! I want that whole crowd throwing snowballs ASAP!"

Elsa hesitated a moment while she thought. Her training with the Guardians so far had been almost exclusively on limiting her powers; only Dr. Lai had pushed her to do more with them. _Still, snow_ _… why, that's the easiest thing in the world._ She tossed the phone past Bunny, then beaned him in the back of the head with a snowball as he caught it. He turned slowly to glare at her and she grinned at him, mouthing, "Play along!"

 _First, we need to take care of this hot ground,_ she thought, stamping a foot down and coating the ground with ice, past her dome, past the capes, all the way out to the crowd, as far as she could. She heard yelling.

 _Next, a little help from the fountain,_ and she froze the water in her dome's lattice frames into snow before shooting it up and out across the crowd.

 _Quickly, the atmosphere!_ She chilled a thick layer of air as wide out as she could, preventing the snow she had just made from melting and condensing more snow out of the moisture in the air.

 _And now_ _… Let it go._ Elsa spread her arms out to her sides and raised them up, shooting out as much snow as she could as she slowly spun. She turned her face up and frowned at the bright sun, condensing another layer of air into a misty cloud as she continued conjuring snow.

Within a minute, Bunny was engaged in numerous snowball fights, blurring across the plaza from one group of people to another. Elsa vanished Diana's handcuffs, nodding toward the crowd, and the cape rolled her eyes before scooping up some snow and joining in. Geoffrey stayed by her side, keeping an eye on her, but eventually the Workshop's three other Platoons showed up, all in suits and sunglasses and pretending to talk into their earpieces before nodding and converging as a squad on a random person from the crowd, then screaming "Abort mission!" and scattering. Eventually, battle lines were drawn and two discrete groups formed, with Bunny contributing to both sides.

Elsa smiled, wishing she could join in. Wishing Anna were here. _She would absolutely love this._

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Elsa sat on the exam table as Dr. Lai turned to her computer and began going over the results of her last examination. With no one watching her, Elsa's shoulders slumped slightly and her gaze fell to her hands in her lap. She resisted the urge to kick her legs, but she couldn't help worrying her lip with her teeth; it seemed that was one habit she'd never be rid of.

"Hmm… it seems this won't be your last physical after all," the doctor said from her chair, still staring at her monitor. Elsa sat up straight. "It's as I suspected: your powers have grown. Grown considerably, and in only two months." Dr. Lai turned a wide smile on Elsa. "We'll be having many more meetings in the future. Lots more tests."

 _No._ "Grown? My control has grown, but powers don't grow." As a ward of the Guardians living in the Workshop, Elsa had quickly become acquainted with the facts of supers, free of the speculation and exaggeration she had heard on the playground and from the media, and immutability was one of the basics of breakthroughs. "A B-class is a B-class, and no amount of training will change that. Breakthroughs are what they are, forever."

Dr. Lai shrugged and turned back to her computer. "Generally, yes, but a very small percentage of breakthroughs—of which you are a part—have powers that grow in magnitude over time. You won't pick up new powers, but the range, strength, and speed of the ones you have have all increased, and that will almost certainly continue. We had you down as a B-class before due to you having C-class scores in what are generally three distinct power sets, but these newest results make you a legitimate B-class." She tossed another smile over her shoulder. "You might end up our first cryokinetic A-class!"

Elsa's heart was already sinking. "I suppose I won't be able to go home after all, then?"

"What?" The doctor turned around and faced her fully, eyes searching Elsa's face. Whatever she found caused her to sit up straight, taking a moment to compose herself before bringing out the first _comforting_ smile Elsa had ever seen from her. _I didn_ _'t know she_ had _a bedside manner. I didn_ _'t think she was that kind of doctor._ "Elsa," the doctor began, her voice warm and smile held firmly in place, "nothing is going to keep you away from your family. Your powers have grown, and we'll have to monitor that—monthly checkups—but as we saw in your display on the Common yesterday, so has your control. It's not like your powers will spike suddenly…"

The doctor trailed off, and Elsa tensed. She could tell the doctor had been taken by one of her insightful tangents (which usually led to a new battery of tests), and Elsa was already steeling herself for whatever would come back, but after a moment, Dr. Lai shook her head and continued, smile returning, "Well, they might during adolescence, but even those spikes are unlikely to outpace your control overnight. And I'm sure if they did, you'd be on the phone instantly to tell me about it," her grin widened a little, becoming more familiar, "however much I terrify you."

Dr. Lai rolled her chair over and patted Elsa on the knee. "You're a good girl Elsa. And, again, nothing is going to keep you away from your family."

ooooooooooooooooooooo

" _Really, Elsa, I thought you said your control was improving? You're clearly even worse than before,"_ her father said. His voice sounded tinny and empty through the phone; Elsa was having trouble understanding the words. Everyone, all of the supers, they all said her control had been impressive. Did control mean something different to him? Did her father expect her to stop using her powers entirely?

Was that the goal? To pretend to be normal?

Her mother chimed in, _"We've got all the staff back full-time now, but if that's the level your control is at, we'd have to go back to scheduling them to work only when you're at school, and that just won't do."_ It would be inconvenient to hide her powers if she couldn't keep them locked up all the time.

" _Princess, you mustn't lie about your lack of progress. You had everyone here so excited to see you, but obviously you can't come home now, after that display at the Common,"_ said her father. _"Imagine if you had had one of your outbursts in front of the help?"_ Bunny's training had shown her what _outbursts_ looked like; what she had wrought at that fountain had been a marvel… but her parents hadn't seen her training, hadn't had her lessons on supers and powers, and couldn't appreciate the feat she had performed. It was like they were talking to someone she used to be.

" _Or Anna!"_ her mother exclaimed. _"It's fortunate she didn't recognize you with that hair color!"_

Elsa's heart jumped. "Anna saw me on the news?"

" _Yes,"_ her father said. _"She saw the news report about the summer snowstorm in Boston and said she wished she could go there with you, while looking at you! If she didn't remember you as having brown hair, she might have recognized you, and then where would we be?"_ They had dyed her hair for picture day at school and the family Christmas card. When her parents had realized Anna remembered Elsa as a brunette, they had hidden the few pictures of her new hair color.

Her mother spoke up, _"Are you starting to see, honey? How irresponsible you've been?"_ They thought she'd been lying about improving her control. They thought she'd been training to hide. _"We all miss you dearly—especially Anna, she asks about you every day—but we can't have you back like—like THAT!"_ Like the thing she was. A breakthrough. A super. Unnatural.

Her father sighed. _"At this point, after having just seen a girl with a blonde braid make snow, you coming home… it's too risky. What if Anna saw you and put two and two together?"_ Were her parents worried about Anna remembering her accident, or knowing that someone in the family wasn't normal?

After a moment her mother spoke up again, _"We've decided you should try to aim for the end of the season. By then people should have forgotten about your mid-summer snow mishap and you can go back to school like a normal girl."_ Elsa realized she was never going to go home. They wouldn't take her back until she was normal, but…

"…And if I'm still not normal by the end of the summer?" Elsa asked.

" _Oh, honey. You can't think like that. Don't quit before you even start, that's not like you,"_ her mother said. Good girls weren't quitters. But it wasn't quitting if you didn't do something you didn't want to do, was it?

" _Your mother's right, Elsa. This is just a little slip-up. We trust you to keep being the good girl you've always been."_

 _I will be a good girl, but I_ _'m starting to wonder if you really know what that means,_ Elsa thought.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

 _Hiccup: What if I never get a girlfriend?_

 _Elsa:_ _'If'?_

 _Hiccup: I_ _'m serious! I'm already 14 and I've never even held a girl's hand before!_

 _Elsa: You_ _'ve been 14 for a day._

 _Hiccup: A long day. You_ _'ll understand when you're older._

 _Elsa: I can see why you think you_ _'ll never get a girlfriend._

 _Hiccup: But what if I_ _'m, like… too old? Like, there's a socially acceptable age for your first time holding hands and kissing and—and stuff and now someday I'll meet a girl and she'll be all 'Ooh, what a nice young man, kind and virile—'_

 _Elsa: Ew._

 _Hiccup:_ _'—but what's this? You have no experience with girls at all? I don't know what scared them all away, but I'm no longer interested! Farewell, handsome stallion!'_

 _Elsa: I_ _'m too young for you._

 _Hiccup: Ew._

 _Elsa: And I haven_ _'t even started puberty yet—_

 _Hiccup: Okay, stop._

 _Elsa:_ _—but they tell me once I have, I_ _'ll know if I like boys or girls, and if it's boys—_

 _Hiccup: Please stop._

 _Elsa:_ _—and if you_ _'re the kind of boy I like, because that's important too—_

 _Hiccup: You win, I_ _'ll stop talking about my lack of a girlfriend-ness!_

 _Elsa:_ _—well, we already know each other quite well, so there_ _'d be no need for any courtship—_

 _Hiccup: La la la la la can_ _'t hear you_

 _Elsa:_ _—and we could just jumps straight into—_

 _Hiccup: LA LA LA LA_

 _Elsa:_ _—having barbed conversations with each other._

 _Hiccup: So I saw the staff carrying a bunch of stuff into your room._

 _Elsa: Is that your coy way of asking if I_ _'m moving in permanently?_

 _Hiccup: Well, the summer is ending_ _…_

 _Elsa: My parents_ _… don't want a super, it seems. And that's who I am._

 _Hiccup: Cool. I mean, not cool, obviously_ _—so not cool that your parents are—I mean, you know I understand. But like_ _… cool that you're really moving in._

 _Elsa: Still too young._

 _Hiccup: Ew._

 _Hiccup: So like, are you gonna go to super school with me?_

 _Elsa: Yes._

 _Elsa: What is super school?_

ooooooooooooooooooooo

TW: Math below.

AN: Confession: I have an embarrassing amount of trouble figuring out ages from dates. The very first word in the story has been retconned—Elsa is 10 during the Event, and turned 11 in chapter 3. She's 3.5 years older than Anna, who's having her 8th birthday. Although their timelines are currently chronologically out of sync (this chapter has Elsa in 1999, while Jack's last chapter was set in 2001), Jack is two years younger than Elsa, and a year and a half older than Anna.

So much in my life has changed in just the few short months since I started this story. I finished my first year of grad school, got to experience (and bomb) my first tech interview, picked up a girlfriend, started exercising regularly, and decided to take the JLPT this December.

What does this mean for you, gentle reader? I truly love this story, but my one-chapter-a-week plan is clearly out the window. I like to do one or two scenes per sitting, but, knowing that once I start writing I won't be able to stop for at least a couple of hours, I only write when I know I have a good block of time free. So I've had to set more realistic goals: namely, finish the story. Chapters will get done as they get done, and they _will_ get done, and that's the only commitment I can make.

Next chapter: Rapunzel!

PS: So between when I wrote this and when I posted it, I got an internship! From those same people I thought I bombed the interview with! Which means the rest of my summer just got busier, and in particular, since I'm being brought on for my Japanese skills (which I've barely used in the last year), the next couple of weeks before the internship starts are just going to be packed with Japanese study. Nevertheless, I remain committed to this story! I'm already hard at work on the next chapter! (by rewatching _Tangled_ :D)


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